I don't have bad days because I'm not a woman: Putin

Vladimir Putin does not have bad days because he is "not a woman", and would rather not shower next to a gay man because he wouldn't want to "provoke him", he has revealed in a documentary by the film-maker Oliver Stone.

The Russian president's comments came in series of interviews with Stone on topics ranging from geopolitics to gay rights and Edward Snowden.

When Stone asked Putin during a tour of the Kremlin if he ever had bad days, Putin said being a man meant he did not have to worry about this. "I am not a woman, so I don't have bad days. I am not trying to insult anyone. That's just the nature of things.

There are certain natural cycles," Putin told the director, according to Bloomberg News, which has seen an advance version of the documentary. Stone was granted rare access to the president and conducted several meetings with Putin over two years.Putin also used the interview to deny there was any persecution of gay people in Russia, despite a law being passed against the "propaganda of homosexuality among minors" and recent reports of a "gay purge" in the Russian republic of Chechnya.

When asked whether he would be comfortable showering next to a gay man,

he said no."I prefer not to go to the shower with him. Why provoke him? But you know, I'm a judo master," said Putin, laughing. The president is also shown driving Stone around Moscow, and describing his daily weightlifting regime.

The pair are captured sitting down to watch the Stanley Kubrick film Dr Strangelove.

The interviews will be released in four hour-long episodes, beginning next week, on the US cable channel Showtime. Stone has previously released a film about the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine, which reiterates the Russian argument that the events were directed by US intelligence, and will have been seen

by the Kremlin. AGENCIES