Russian President Vladimir Putin is reported to have worked as a stuntman in the Soviet movie industry in the 1970s, according to a report by Russian opposition outlet Dozhd TV.

The claim is based on a caption in a photo in a St Petersburg university exhibit, drawing fresh attention to a little-known chapter of the president’s early life.

The photograph of Putin on display at the Martial Arts Centre of the St Petersburg State Marine Technical University, which the president visited on July 27, shows Putin acting as a stuntman in filming alongside fellow martial arts practitioners during the making of a movie for Lenfilm, the Soviet-era movie studio based in Russia’s northern capital.

Putin is famously a judo aficionado and many of his close friends are drawn from his time spent in a dojo on St Petersburg where he was born and worked before moving to Moscow in 1996 to work for then president Boris Yeltsin.

The centre includes images of Putin practising judo under coach Anatoly Rakhlin, as well as portraits of prominent peers such as now billionaire Kremlin insiders Arkady and Boris Rotenberg as well as Vasily Shestakov, who was a Duma deputy and is now the President of the International Sambo Federation, Vedomosti reported.

“I’m still friends with the people I worked with back then,” Putin remarked during the visit, as reported by Vedomosti.

Putin performed on at least two WWII movies, 1972’s Izhora Batallion and 1974’s Blockade, according to Shestakov as cited  by Russian network Dozhd. “We were in Izhora Batallion and Blockade together,” said Shestakov, who is known as Putin’s sports club mate from years ago. 

Dozhd TV added details to Putin’s connections to stunt work, which cited multiple former associates. According to the report, Putin and his longtime judo partner Arkady Rotenberg — who was once dubbed by Vedomosti as “Russia’s state contract king – took part in several patriotic war films filmed at the Lenfilm studio in what was then Leningrad.

The opportunity reportedly came through judo coach Alexander Massarsky, who recruited skilled young athletes for physically demanding film roles. Shestakov, who is a co-author with Putin of a book on judo, confirmed their participation, stating: “We were in Izhora Battalion and Blockade together. We were paid good money for that time. I was paid RUB110 [a month] in my engineer’s job, but when I was working on movies, I made RUB75 rubles a day. That was a lot of money.”

Shestakov noted that the young stuntmen played both Soviet and German soldiers. “It was all the same to us who to play,” he told Dozhd. Massarsky added that “Putin has never played the role of a fascist.”

Another former martial artist, Nikolai Vashshilin, who later became a professional stunt coordinator, also confirmed Putin’s involvement and claimed to possess a photograph from the film set. However, he noted that the image was too poor in quality to clearly identify Putin.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he was not aware of the president’s involvement in stunt work.

During the Soviet era, taking part in film production was a common source of additional income for university students. Those with athletic backgrounds were often selected for higher-paid stunt roles. Lenfilm and Mosfilm were the two premier studios, the Soviet equivalent of Hollywood. Russia has a long and prestigious history of producing high quality films, many of which remain much-loved popular classics to this day.