How boy, five, described tummy kiss that sparked Putin paedophile claims - as Russian president said 'I wanted to stroke him like a kitten'

[link to www.dailymail.co.uk]

It was the uncomfortable image that ended with a Russian dissident being poisoned with a cup of tea laced with polonium in a London hotel, claims an explosive new report.

Vladimir Putin knelt in Moscow’s Red Square and kissed the tummy of a five-year-old boy.

Struck by the bizarre encounter with the Kremlin chief, Nikita Konkin, the boy in the photo said: 'I wasn't ticklish at all. I felt something good.'

At the time it seemed nothing more than a slightly ill-judged publicity stunt.

But months later it would be the catalyst for a bizarre sequence of events that led to exiled former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko and Putin enemy allegedly signing his death warrant by accusing his nemesis of being a paedophile.

Today ten years on from their awkward encounter in Red Square Nikita looks back on it fondly.

At the time he had been on a day trip with his Kolomensk kindergarten when his grandmother, Valentina, had shoved him to the front of a group of crowded boys and in front of the president.

Valentina said he was so star struck from that kiss, Nikita refused to wash his stomach afterwards.

Recalling the moment his gran shouted, ‘look, the president is coming!’, he said: 'I turned, he was walking with bodyguards. He waved his hand to me as if he called me.

'I went to him. Putin asked who I am - and then kissed me. That was it. I was surprised a lot.'