“It wasn’t until the double-whammy of 1) his wife’s car accident in 1993 and 2) a life-threatening house fire in 1996 that Putin began questioning his atheism. During a vulnerable moment before Putin departed for a diplomatic trip to Israel, his mother gave him a baptismal cross. He said of the occasion:
I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since.3
Now, Putin has become a bit of a zealot. “
http://hollowverse.com/vladimir-putin/
Good site, BTW, for summaries of religious leanings of well-known people.
It was HIS baptismal cross.
Just fyi.