Wide Putin Walking / IT'S HIM

About

Wide Putin Walking, also known as IT'S HIM, is a viral video of Russian President Vladimir Putin walking down a hallway, stretched and set to Piano Fantasia’s “Song For Denise” (Maxi version). The video is often paired with a caption or used to fill blank space in exploitables and first appeared online in early February 2020, mostly spreading on YouTube and Discord in May 2020.

Origin

The footage used comes from Vladimir Putin's fourth term inauguration, which was streamed by RT on May 7th, 2018. The oldest recorded instance of Putin Walking edits was uploaded on Telegram^[1] to the channel "Ручка" on February 2nd, 2020, by user ToThePan (seen below). This original version also features the track “Song For Denise” (Maxi) used in the later versions.

Spread

Another stretched version was uploaded on May 27th, 2020 by YouTube^[2] user FlobySop64 (shown below). The video, titled, “Wide Putin Walking,” has since received over 25,000 views, 1,900 likes and 197 comments.

Soon after the distorted version was uploaded to Youtube, the IT'S HIM^[3] Discord server was created by user i5kilo to spread the meme to other communities. Wide Putin Walk was shared to various Discord servers and the caption "IT'S HIM" was popularized.

Various variations of the meme were also uploaded to YouTube, including one such example from YouTuber^[4] astro who posted “thicc putin be walking” on May 29th, 2020. The video (shown below, left)) received over 36,000 views, 4,200 likes and 430 comments. On June 2nd, 2020, YouTube^[5] user SadWoman uploaded another variant with the title, “YOOO ITS HIM,” receiving over 42,000 views, 3,200 likes and 380 comments (shown below, right).

YouTuber^[6] Giancarlos32 uploaded a compilation of Putin Walking memes on June 5th, 2020 (seen below, left). In the video, Giancarlos32 stated the clips used were pulled from Callmecarson’s Discord server where the meme also spread. On June 6th, 2020, YouTube^[7] user Lord Super Succ uploaded an extended version of the meme to their channel featuring the full clip of Putin’s inauguration (shown below, right), receiving over 20,000 views, 1,600 likes and 240 comments.

YouTuber^[8] Memetastic then uploaded a meme variant of the clip to their channel on June 7th, 2020, with the caption, “Redditors on their way to hate on a kid for not liking Minecraft.” The video (seen below) received over 41,000 views, 4,300 likes and 681 comments.

On June 9th, 2020, Redditor^[9] KlausKreutz posted the meme to the r/dankvideos subreddit, receiving over 150 upvotes. Twitter^[10] user itzutopiastyles replied to a tweet by KEEMSTAR with the meme on June 10th, 2020, where it received over 15,800 views and 358 likes (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References