Vladimir Putin carried a strange smell as if he had "stepped out of a special preparatory bath", according to an ex White House adviser.
Russian politics expert Dr Fiona Hill said it was like a "staged performance" and that she was met with some surprises when seated next to the Kremlin leader at a meeting between Moscow and Washington officials.
"I noticed he didn't eat anything," she said on a recent episode of BBC radio 4's Desert island Discs.
"This sounds really bizarre, but I could smell he was freshly laundered. It was almost like he'd stepped out of some sort of preparatory bath into the moment.
"I just thought 'every element of this is staged. This is a performance'."
It follows several meetings where Putin appeared "weakened", constantly tapping his feet and looking frail.
Dr Hill, who has advised several US administrations on the Kremlin including George W Bush and Donald trump, said she was surprised by the situation.
She revealed further strange features of the meeting such as why she was selected to seat next to Putin, reports the Daily Star.
"At the time I was actually working for the US Government... I sat next to [Putin] and I thought 'why am I seated next to him'?" she said.
"Was it because they thought I was like M (Judi Dench’s character in James Bond)? I was kind of channelling my inner fantasies. Then I thought 'am I the least likely person to stab him with a fork?'."
She was later told by the person sitting on the other side of the Russian president that it was because she was a "nondescript woman".
"'Neither too old or too young, you are not fancily dressed. You've got no cleavage. You are just kind of there," she recalled being told.
The expert said she was so close to Putin that she could have touched him and described his "finely tailored suit" and "a little vein pulsated on the side of his face."
She also noticed how he had lots of giant cards which explained who was who and what he should say.
But she told how she did not really speak to the politician who was "not much of a conversationalist".
At the end of the event, she said he stood up and said 'all ze best.'
A bitter new blame game has erupted among Putin's secret services over pieces of intelligence that led him to invade Ukraine.
There are also claims that the spymaster seen as responsible for telling him that Ukraine was ripe for invasion has not been arrested.
Col-General Sergei Beseda, 68, head of the 5th Service of the Federal Security Service (FSB), was said to have been detained either under house arrest or under pre-trial detention at Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo jail.
Now, a new account based on rare leaks says this is not true despite stark new evidence of the incompetent intelligence reaching Putin.
