Medvedev sets up badminton match with Putin

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has promoted the game of badminton in his video blog, describing it as the choice of those who seek success.

Dressed to play and holding a badminton racket, he told viewers the sport helps develop physical fitness and quick reactions but also in learning to make decisions in life.

“Those who play badminton well can make quick decisions, which means they have the will to achieve success,” Mr Medvedev said in the clip posted on the Kremlin website.

He is then shown playing the game with prime minister Vladimir Putin, the two of them hitting a shuttlecock back and forth in an otherwise empty sports hall.

Mr Medvedev’s video clip was intended to promote badminton in Russian schools, but it was met with some ridicule on the internet – even on his own edited blog, where Dmitry Yermolayev suggested that he should be worried about “more global issues than the type of physical education in schools”.

All of Russia’s post-Soviet presidents have promoted one sport or another. Tennis flourished in Russia under Boris Yeltsin, an avid player, while Mr Putin has often been seen demonstrating his judo moves or skiing in the mountains above Sochi, the site of the 2014 Winter Games.

Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev announced last month that they intend to swap positions next year, with Putin returning to the presidential post he held from 2000 until he stepped down in 2008 because of term limits.