From the horse’s mouth! Putin narrates how he fell off a horse

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has rather shockingly admitted to taking a fall off a horse.

Putin, 68, who has been in power in Russia for more than two decades as president or prime minister, has carefully cultivated a macho image for years with a series of photo opps.

From taking a dip in icy waters, riding on horseback topless, throwing opponents on the judo mat, freeing tigers into the wild and swimming butterfly stroke in a river, Putin has reveled in being seen as the ‘bad guy’ of global politics.

But in a rare admission of fallibility, he told the TASS news agency on Friday, “They were once filming me, I was training, and it happened that the horse stopped in front of a barrier and I did a somersault, literally a somersault.”

He did not say when the incident had happened, but that he had fallen “fairly comfortably” and told a cameraman who was filming to keep the footage.

“(It was) the first time I heard this answer from him: I’ll delete it immediately,” said Putin.

Surely it is easier to fall of a horse than off his high horse at the Kremlin.