Vladimir Putin reportedly told a teenager that he believes in Father Christmas as “all normal, decent people” do. A news report by The Telegraph showed a video in which the Russian leader visited a youth conference.
Standing next to a Christmas tree, he said: “Of course I do. All normal, decent people believe in Father Frost.”
The event in Moscow was for a children’s charity.
It comes as Putin’s war in Ukraine is said to have killed at least 450 children.
Meanwhile, Putin has been portrayed as Santa in an anti-Western propaganda video released on the country’s social media.
The film – made by a production company called Signal – depicts “Santa Putin” swapping a photograph of a child’s same-sex parents for one of a mother and father, and gifting the boy being raised as a girl a football, toy cars and a drum kit.
MailOnline reported that the video feeds into Russian prejudices about Europe and the United States which have been fuelled by pro-Kremlin propagandists during the war in Ukraine to frame the conflict as a clash of values between Russia and Ukraine’s Western allies.
The clip shows a boy in the West writing and drawing a picture for Santa, wishing for traditional male toys as well as a mother and father.
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The camera lingers on books in the child’s comfortable home, showing fictional titles like ‘Straight into Gay’, ‘Render me, Gender me’ and ‘Growing up Gay’.
It also shows that the room the boy is in has limited Christmas decorations. There is a Christmas tree in the corner, but it has no lights on.
