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Putin’s aide calls Super Bowl ring story "something barely conceivable"

Robert Kraft, a billionaire businessman, was quoted by The New York Post as saying Putin stole the ring from him eight years ago

LONDON, June 16 (Itar-Tass) - Fresh fable around a ring that an American businessman presented to Vladimir Putin as a gift in 2005 looks like something barely conceivable, the presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Sunday.

Along with this, he made it clear that he does not size up the story of eight years told that was highlighted by the U.S. media a few days ago as an unfriendly gesture timed for the summit meeting between Putin and Barack Obama, due Monday, even though the story is being circulated right now.

“I wouldn’t like to believe in this highly absurd conspiracy theory but on this the whole this whole thing looks like something barely conceivable,” he said.

He confirmed that he was standing by Putin’s side right at the scene in 2005 when the U.S. businessman Robert Kraft, who came up with sensational allegations a few days ago, presented the so-called Super Bowl ring ostensibly worth $ 25,000 to the Russian President.

“I saw it with my own eyes that that’s why I think his assertions that someone put pressure on him might be a matter of a detailed conversation with psychoanalysts,” Peskov said.

“I also know that if the gentleman really feels so much pain over a loss suffered in 2005 then President Putin is ready to send him some other ring, which he will buy for his own money.”

Robert Kraft, a billionaire businessman, was quoted by The New York Post as saying Putin stole the ring from him eight years ago and a group of other business executives were visiting St. Petersburg.

“I took out the ring and showed it to /Putin/, and he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring,’ ” Kraft told the gathering at Carnegie Hall’s Medal of Excellence gala Friday. “I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out.”

The ring was made upon a special order to mark the victory of the Kraft-owned New England Patriots team in the national football championship.

“What Mr. Kraft is saying now sounds really strange,” Peskov said. “I was standing just a few inches away from him and from President Putin and I heard Kraft say he was making a gift to him.”

Like other official presents, the Super Bowl ring is now kept in the Kremlin library, Peskov said.