Kremlin spokesman says Putin does not have Asperger's

Ray Locker | USA TODAY

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that the longtime leader does not have Asperger's Syndrome, which was theorized by analysts in a 2008 report for the Pentagon obtained by USA TODAY.

"That is stupidity not worthy of comment," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Gazeta.ru news website late Thursday, Agence France Presse reported.

The study, conducted for the Office of Net Assessment, a Pentagon think tank, said Putin has Asperger's syndrome, "an autistic disorder which affects all of his decisions."

Analysts at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., have studied Putin and other world leaders since 1996 as part of their Body Leads program. The 2008 study monitored Putin's movements through a discipline called movement pattern analysis and concluded that "very early in life perhaps, even in utero, Putin suffered a huge hemispheric event to the left temporal lobe of the prefrontal cortex, which involves both central and peripheral nervous systems, gross motor functioning on his right side (head, rib cage, arm and leg) and his micro facial expression, eye gaze, hearing and voice and general affect."

A Pentagon spokeswoman said Thursday that high-ranking officials there had not seen the report, and White House spokesman Josh Earnest said he had no comment on the USA TODAY report about Putin.

However, Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said on MSNBC Thursday that the U.S. government studied Putin and other leaders often, although he did not mention specifics.