AFTER a week of frenzied speculation across Russia, President Putin finally explained yesterday that he had kissed a young boy on the stomach in the Kremlin because he wanted to “stroke him like a kitten”.

But his explanation during a live webcast held by the BBC and a popular Russian browser left many viewers even more bemused.

The normally dour former KGB officer insisted that it was a spontaneous decision to approach the five-year-old, who was in a group of tourists, to lift his shirt and kiss his stomach.

“People came up and I began talking to them, among them this little boy. He seemed to me very independent, sure of himself and at the same time defenceless so to speak, an innocent boy and a very nice little boy,” Mr Putin said. “I tell you honestly, I just wanted to stroke him like a kitten and it came out in this gesture. There is nothing behind it.”

Russians occasionally kiss babies on the stomach, but almost never five-year-old boys.

The country was so stunned that the issue shot almost to the top of a list of more than 162,000 questions sent into www.yandex.ru, which cohosted the webcast yesterday.

None was more surprised than the little boy himself — identified in the Russian press as Nikita Konkin. The Izvestia daily reported that Nikita had refused to wash ever since.

“I just liked him and he liked me very much. I want to be president myself,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. Some political analysts suggested that the kiss was a clumsy attempt to soften Mr Putin’s image in the run-up to the G8 summit in St Petersburg from July 15 to 17.

The Kremlin has launched a huge publicity drive, with the help of Ketchum, an American PR firm, to counter critics of its campaign to curb democracy.

The PR team denies having anything to do with “that kiss”. It is, however, helping to organise media events like the webcast to give Mr Putin a chance to explain his policies to a Western audience.

Mr Putin used the opportuninty to defend his democratic credentials, his policies in Chechnya and his decision to cut off gas supplies to neighbouring Ukraine. He also tried to allay fears of a new Cold War by declaring his friendship for President Bush, whom he described as a “decent” person.

Mr Bush “is a very good partner for me with whom I can not only talk, but agree”, he said. “I want to note with pleasure that he’s a man who, not just because he’s President of the United States, but because of his personal, human qualities, I count among my circle of friends.”

He escaped some of the more trivial and fanciful questions, including one about a giant mythical octopus sleeping under the Pacific Ocean.

But after the webcast, journalists in the Kremlin studio did ask whether he recalled losing his virginity.

“I can’t remember exactly when I did it for the first time,” he said, laughing. “But I certainly remember when I did it the last time, to the exact minute.”

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