Did Russian President Vladimir Putin stop walking after hearing Indian National Anthem? Fact Check

Claim: Russian President Vladimir Putin stopped walking after hearing the Indian National Anthem as a mark of respect.

Conclusion: The claim is Misleading. The footage is edited. Russian President Vladimir Putin stopped walking after hearing the Russian National Anthem.

Rating: Misleading —

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Several social media users across various platforms claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin stopped while hearing the Indian National Anthem.

An X user ‘sttalkindia’ shared such a post on 4 September 2025, claiming that Putin “understood” the Indian national anthem and “stayed still in respect.” 

View the post and clip below: 

When #Putin understood #India #NationalAnthem & stayed still in respect. pic.twitter.com/8SEAT94f5U

— Straight Talk India (@sttalkindia) September 4, 2025

Another verified X user ‘Meenaks06356943’ shared the same video with the caption : “पुतिन जो भारत के राष्ट्रीय गान पर ठहर गए भारत के और मोदी जी के सच्चे दोस्त “ In English this reads : Putin stopped for India’s national anthem A true friend of India and Modi ji. View the post here:

पुतिन जो भारत के राष्ट्रीय गान पर ठहर गए 🫡🫡
भारत के और मोदी जी के सच्चे दोस्त ♥️♥️ pic.twitter.com/Z58lv1lP12

— Meenakshi Singh (@Meenaks06356943) September 2, 2025

FACT CHECK

DigitEYE India decided to investigate this claim and discovered that it is misleading. We conducted a reverse image search of the keyframes to identify where the footage originated from. The search took us to a video which was posted 11 years ago on Youtube, in which the Russian National Anthem was played.

The original footage is from the Luzhniki Sports Palace in Moscow held on 23–24 September 2011, during the Congress of the All-Russian Political Party. The Indian national anthem was not played at the event but the Russian National Anthem and Putin had stopped walking after hearing the anthem.

View the footage here:

Another video of the same was posted 10 years ago on Youtube can be viewed here.

We also came across a longer version of the video posted 13 years ago, where Putin stopped walking after hearing the anthem. View the footage here, from the timestamp 1:30 onwards. This video also sheds light on the event where this clip was taken at 1:19. 

The translated text from Russian to English reads: Congress of the All Russian Political Party “United Russia”, September 23-24, 2011. View the screenshot of the translation above.

Context of the event was that then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had nominated Vladimir Putin as the presidential candidate for 2012. A report by Al Jazeera published on 24 September 2011 confirms the event. 

View a snippet from the report below –

The currently shared video has been edited to insert the Indian national anthem over the original footage of 2011 Russian political event to mislead viewers. Hence, the claim is misleading.