Vladimir Putin with a fan
On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted an eight-year-old girl in the Kremlin and had her join him in an unusual phone call to his finance minister to request a budget grant for her home region.
The Kremlin published a video of Putin greeting the girl, Raisat Akipova, the latest in a string of appearances since a short-armed mutiny last month that appears to portray him as caring, concerned, and in control.
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov first seemed perplexed by the phone call and did not respond to the girl’s greeting, but immediately agreed to the additional cash for her home region in southern Russia.
“Excellent!” Putin responded, before assuring the girl, “We’ve got 5 billion roubles for Dagestan” – a sum equal to $55.6 million.
During the talk, Putin laughed with Raisat and made a similar call to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. When pushed by the president, the girl, who was clutching a bouquet of flowers, thanked Siluanov.
The visit followed Putin’s visit to Dagestan last week during which he mingled with a sizable throng.
The Kremlin cited this as proof of the president’s astounding popularity in Russian society, just days after the brief mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group spurred him to warn of the prospect of civil war in Russia.
Putin told Raisat that he had invited her and her parents to Moscow because he had been upset by seeing a photo of her in tears after failing to get to see him on his Dagestan trip.
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