Vladimir Putin visits a sports center, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on April 27, 2026. GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS AND INFORMATION OFFICE/TASS/SIPA
Whenever Vladimir Putin's popularity wanes, he resorts to the same image, one that has almost become a communications ritual. Everytime time, the Russian president summons the cameras and kisses a child in public. On Monday, April 27, the staged event was repeated once again. More than four years after the invasion of Ukraine, at a time when the Kremlin has grown alarmed over record-low polling numbers, the Russian leader broke his media silence with a visit to a sports center in Saint Petersburg.
Standing in front of about 20 young girls lined up in black leotards, all clearly intimidated, he began a conversation about their age and their love of ballet. The exchange was brief, but it was swiftly disseminated by Kremlin-controlled media outlets. Putin, stiff and stoic as usual, ended up kissing one of the dancers, a 10-year-old, on the forehead, then gently touched one of her classmates' hair. "Thank you!" they called out to the Russian leader before he left the gymnasium, flanked by his bodyguards.
The last such scene dated back to June 2023, after Yevgeny Prigozhin, the now-deceased head of the Wagner Group mercenary company, staged a mutiny that nearly destabilized Putin's regime. During a visit to Dagestan, a Russian republic in the Caucasus region, Putin, surrounded by a crowd of locals, kissed a teenage girl on the forehead, despite the strict anti-Covid rules that were in effect around the president at the time. The kiss in St. Petersburg was, according to Farida Rustamova, a Russian political scientist in exile and editor-in-chief of the website Vlast ("power"), "a sure sign that Putin is worried about his falling approval ratings: he's publicly kissing children again."
