(Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed an eight-year-old girl to the Kremlin on Tuesday and invited her to join him in a bizarre phone call to his finance minister asking for a budget grant for his region of origin.
The Kremlin has released a video of Putin welcoming the girl, Raisat Akipova, in the latest in a string of appearances since a brief armed mutiny last month that appears designed to show him as caring, concerned and in control.
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov initially seemed puzzled by the call and did not respond to the girl’s greetings, but quickly accepted the additional funding for his home region in southern Russia.
“Excellent!” Putin replied, before telling the girl: “We have 5 billion rubles for Dagestan” – a sum equivalent to 55.6 million dollars.
Putin laughed amusedly during the conversation and a similar call he made with Raisat to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. The girl, holding a bouquet of flowers, thanked Siluanov at the request of the president.
The visit followed a visit by Putin to Dagestan last week when, uncharacteristically, he mingled with a large crowd of people.
The Kremlin cited this as evidence of the president’s “astonishing” support for Russian society, days after the brief mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group prompted him to warn of the risk of civil war in Russia.
Putin told Raisat he invited her and her parents to Moscow because he was ‘shocked’ when he saw a picture of her in tears after failing to see him during his trip to Dagestan .
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Gareth Jones)