Warrior pose
What were you doing on 1erJanuary at 9 a.m.? Vladimir Putin was already up. That day, in the cold, the Russian president actually went to the Vishnevsky military hospital, on the outskirts of Moscow. There, he distributed happy new year greetings, visited the installations, spoke with the doctors on duty, met soldiers injured at the front, but above all promised “to intensify further” strikes on Ukraine in the coming days, in retaliation for bombing by the Ukrainian army on the Russian city of Belgorod.
Esthete of sobriety
For the occasion, the Russian president did not choose verbal sobriety, but rather clothing. He wore a black suit and a sky shirt without his tie, for a result that was distressingly banal but at least allowed us to recall a principle of ancestral elegance. For a refined and elegant outfit, lengthening the silhouette, you should ensure that the sleeve of the shirt exceeds the sleeve of the jacket by approximately 2 centimeters. Suffice to say that the rule in question is, here, completely flouted.
White coat effect
Facing Putin stood a man in a white coat. Harmless in a hospital? Yes, but no… In fact, for around forty years, science has identified what we call “the white coat effect”. This designates the physiological effects that the simple sight, experienced as stressful, of a doctor in a white coat can cause in a patient. This can lead to an unusual increase in heart rate and a rise in blood pressure… It remains to be seen whether Vladimir Putin is subject to this. Or if it’s the doctors who get stressed at the sight of the Russian president.
Regulatory jacket
Alongside Vladimir Putin and this doctor, was the Russian Secretary of State, Deputy Minister of Defense, the man named Nikolai Pankov, dressed in a green zipped jacket and a sand-colored t-shirt. Casual? Yes, but this relaxation is perfectly regulatory. In 2012, the dress code of Russian soldiers was modernized to facilitate their freedom of movement and simplify their daily work. Jacket, shirt and tie were thus replaced by the jacket and t-shirt here in the image.
Calendar muse
It’s a small world, so the man behind said Russian army clothing reform is present in this image. Vladimir Poutine ? Missed. Transformed into the face of a calendar and pinned on a tapestry reminding us of all the splendor of Soviet interior design, the man named Sergei Shoigu, superior to Nikolai Pankov and minister of defense for fourteen years, was in fact at the origin of this clothing reform. Which does not answer another question posed by this image: in this 1erJanuary, is this calendar a vestige from 2023 or, already, a new one for 2024?