Vladimir Putin does not have bad days because he is “not a woman”, and would rather not shower next to a gay man because he wouldn’t want to “provoke him”, he has revealed in a documentary by the film-maker Oliver Stone, reports The Guardian.
The Russian president’s comments came in series of interviews with Stone on topics ranging from geopolitics to gay rights and Edward Snowden.
When Stone asked Putin during a tour of the Kremlin if he ever had bad days, Putin said being a man meant he did not have to worry about this. “I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days. I am not trying to insult anyone. That’s just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles,” Putin told the director, according to Bloomberg News, which has seen an advance version of the documentary.
Stone was granted rare access to the president and conducted several meetings with Putin over two years.
Putin also used the interview to deny there was any persecution of gay people in Russia, despite a law being passed against the “propaganda of homosexuality among minors” and recent reports of a “gay purge” in the Russian republic of Chechnya. When asked whether he would be comfortable showering next to a gay man, he said no.
“I prefer not to go to the shower with him. Why provoke him? But you know, I’m a judo master,” said Putin, laughing.The president is also shown driving Stone around Moscow, and describing his daily weightlifting regime. The pair are captured sitting down to watch the Stanley Kubrick film Dr Strangelove.
The interviews will be released in four hour-long episodes, beginning next week, on the US cable channel Showtime.
Stone has previously released a film about the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine, which reiterates the Russian argument that the events were directed by US intelligence, and will have been seen by the Kremlin as a friendly interlocutor. From the clips released so far, the tone is rarely confrontational, and Putin’s answers are rarely fact-checked or countered.
In one of the more curious moments in the interview, Putin appeared to change the story of how Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower, ended up in Moscow. “Our first contact with Mr Snowden was in China,” said Putin, according to Bloomberg. “We were told back then that this was a person who wanted to fight against violations of human rights.”
The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported at the time that Snowden had spent time at the Russian consulate in Hong Kong before he boarded a flight to Moscow, but this has not been confirmed. Snowden’s story was that he had merely been using Moscow as a transit hub and had planned to continue his journey but had his passport annulled by US authorities.
At the time, Putin and other Russian officials gave the impression that the first Russia knew of Snowden was when he arrived in Moscow with the intention to transit to Latin America.
“Mr Snowden arrived in Moscow, which was completely unexpected for us,” said Putin at the time. “He came as a transit passenger, so he didn’t need a visa or other documents.”
Snowden is still in Moscow, and has always denied cooperating in any way with Russian intelligence. In a clip from Stone’s film, Putin also denies that Snowden handed over any information.
“Snowden is not a traitor,” Putin said. “He did not betray the interests of his country. Nor did he transfer any information to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people. The only thing Snowden does, he does publicly.”
The clips released so far from Stone’s interviews also see Putin musing on life and philosophy. “They say those who are destined to be hanged are not going to drown,” said Putin, when asked by Stone if he worried about assassination attempts.
Putin also gave an interview to the NBC host, Megyn Kelly, over the weekend, in which he again denied any Russian interference in the US election.