Vladimir Putin appeared to stage a friendly encounter with a member of the public in a bizarre video shared by the Kremlin on Monday.
The Russian president was filmed making friendly small talk with a man in a hotel lobby during a planned meeting with an old schoolteacher in Moscow.
Putin, 73, cut a casual figure as he paraded the city, dressed down and with a small security detail in an apparent rebuttal of claims that security around him has been tightened amid fears of an assassination attempt or coup.
The Russian leader, who has recently faced accusations of being increasingly out of touch, stopped to ask the man, who said he was from Sochi, how the weather was in the city, where Putin has his own fortified complex.
“It was cold when we left and it was cold when we arrived here too,” the man joked. They spoke briefly about the man’s thoughts on the capital as onlookers filmed, before Putin headed back to his car with his teacher.
While the video cast Putin as a popular president relating to his public, journalists quickly identified the man as a former employee of a company that managed homes owned by Putin and the mother of his long-time partner.
Independent Russian investigative outlet Agency identified the man as Alexander Bazarny, who they said worked as a security guard at the Krasnodar company Gazstroy Bezopasnost and Moscow-based Svod International – since renamed Gazprom Polyana – between 2010 and 2011.
According to Agency, Svod International managed the Achipse chalet near Krasnaya Polyana, which has been dubbed Putin’s secret ski lodge and is officially owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom.
The company reportedly managed other luxury cottages in the area, including one belonging to Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast claimed to be Putin’s longtime companion.
Svod International says it holds a property trust for the Gazprom Mountain Resort Complex in Krasnaya Polyana.
The Kremlin did not identify the apparent passerby in its statement.
It said Putin had invited his former teacher, Vera Gurevich, to the annual Red Square parade on 9 May and to then spend a few days in Moscow enjoying a cultural programme.
Speaking at Moscow’s most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years – an event to mark victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War – Putin vowed victory in Ukraine, before saying he thought the war would soon end.
The president’s ratings have dipped in recent months but remain high, according to state pollsters.
Russia’s state Duma, the lower house of parliament, is up for re-election in September, at a time when growth forecasts for this year have been sharply cut back amid signs that people are unhappy about a growing internet crackdown.
Western media outlets reported recently that Putin had spent weeks holed up in bunkers over fears of an assassination attempt or uprising.
The Financial Times reported earlier in May that Russia had stepped up security protocols for the president, claiming Putin was spending more time in underground bunkers “micromanaging the war” in Ukraine and growing “more detached from civilian affairs”, citing unnamed sources close to Putin and a source “close to European intelligence services”.
Russian officials dismissed the reports as nonsense.
