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Putin at the meeting with schoolchildren in Vladivostok
Photo: SERGEI BOBYLEV / SPUTNIK / KREMLIN / POOL / EPA
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a mistake in history during a discussion with students - and was promptly corrected by one of them.
Peter the Great (1675-1725) did not fight in the Seven Years' War, but in the Great Northern War, which lasted 21 years, the boy, who was visibly uncomfortable with the correction, told the Kremlin chief.
This had previously mixed up the two wars.
In Vladivostok, the president met some of the country's most talented students, including winners of various academic competitions.
It is true that Putin thanked him for the "little correction".
But the headmistress reprimanded the student for a "certain audacity," as the media reported.
Media critical of the Kremlin and the opposition celebrated the student's courage.
The commentator Michail Fischman said that for the first time someone dares to tell the president that he is wrong.
Kira Jarmysch, the spokeswoman for the imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexej Navalny, criticized the teacher, who apparently believed that "school does not teach facts, but devotion and creeping".
The excitement over the fall of September 1st, the day when school started in Russia across the country, was so great that Kremlin spokesman Dmitrij Peskov smoothed things over on Thursday and referred to the student as "Molodez" - in English: "Magnificent boys".
“That's no cheek at all.
We categorically disagree with the headmistress of the school. «Peskow expressed the hope that the boy would not get into any further trouble at the school.
asa / dpa