Vladimir Putin was "clumsy" and hobbled down the stairs of his jet, with a rigid and stiff arm as he arrived in Iran on Tuesday to meet world leaders, a body language expert has said.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin landed in Iran's capital Tehran to meet with fellow brute Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he appears to struggle to get down the steps of the plane.
Putin appears unsteady on his feet and his appearance could further rumours about his ill health, with the warmonger rumoured to have Parkinsons or terminal cancer.
"The man who arrives behind him seems to have no trouble using the steps facing front but Putin turns sideways and takes the last one clumsily," body language expert Judi James told The Mirror.
"This could be down to height or even age but he appears to be making heavy duty of it", she added.
Bizarre footage of the Russian leader shows his right arm completely rigid and not moving as he walked down the red carpet which was rolled out at Mehrabad airport.
The warmonger met with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi soon after arriving, and then he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The extraordinary trip is the first one for Mr Putin outside the former Soviet Union since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
The leader is hoping to form a new alliance in the face of western sanctions and seeks to boost ties in "energy, transit and commercial exchanges, as well as regional developments", the Iranian government website said.
“Iran has been under sanctions of various sorts for decades, and Iran has adapted itself well to keep developing and improving the well-being of its people, despite all those restrictions”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Russian state television.
The meeting comes as US intelligence suggested that Iran is preparing to sell drones to Russia to use in Ukraine.
Putin's health has been under intense scrutiny over the last few months, with rumours swirling about everything from cancer to Parkinson's.
However, the rigid arm displayed in Iran could be a “gunslinger’s gait”.
The British Medical Journal published a study in 2015 on his “clearly reduced right-sided arm swing”, which it says could be related to weapons training he received as a KGB agent.
“KGB operatives were instructed to keep their weapon in their right hand close to their chest and to move forward with one side, usually the left, presumably allowing subjects to draw the gun as quickly as possible when confronted with a foe,” the researchers wrote.
Ms James also noted the gun training, saying the rigid arm "was initially rumoured to be caused by a stroke and more recently Parkinson’s has been mentioned but there is also a theory that it is down to some weaponry training he might have had years ago."
Russian state TV propagandist Yevgeny Popov said Iran and Russia hope to form an "axis of good", mocking former US President George Bush's "axis of evil" description of Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Yuri Ushakov, Mr Putin's foreign policy adviser also said how important the meeting was given their positions on most issues are "identical."
