Putin Denies Stealing Super Bowl Ring From Patriot Owner Robert Kraft

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Patriots owner Robert Kraft aren't seeing eye-to-eye over a meeting in 2005-at the crux of the argument: a Super Bowl ring.

That's right, a Super Bowl ring. The Russian politician and sports maven are now locked in a somewhat uncomfortable argument over whether or not Putin swooped up Kraft's XXXIX victory jewels almost eight years after the two men got together during Kraft's trip to St. Petersburg.

When Putin and Kraft met up in 2005, Kraft told the New York Post that he produced the gold and diamond ring and showed it to the Russian president.

"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 said during Carnegie Hall's Medal of Excellence gala in New York Thursday. "I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out."

This is where things get hairy: Putin's people deny that the situation went down as such-they claimed that Kraft gave Putin the ring as a gift.

In fact, Kraft released a statement at the time acknowledging that he had given the bauble to Putin.

"President Putin, a great and knowledgeable sports fan, was clearly taken with its uniqueness," he said at the time. "I decided to give him the ring as a symbol of the respect and admiration that I have for the Russian people and [his] leadership."

Now, Kraft claims that he did want the nearly five-karat ring back. He said he publicized that statement after receiving a call from the then-George W. Bush White House, telling him that "'it would really be in the best interest of US-Soviet relations if you meant to give the ring as a present."

But, as Kraft relayed to the Post on Thursday, "I really didn't [want to]. I had an emotional tie to the ring, it has my name on it. I don't want to see it on eBay. There was a pause on the other end of the line and the voice repeated, 'it would really be in the best interest if you meant to give the ring as a present.'"

Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, however, maintained that he saw the entire interaction go down, and that the ring was gifted to Putin.

"What Mr. Kraft is saying now is weird," Peskov told CNN. "I was standing 20 centimeters away from him and Mr. Putin and saw and heard how Mr. Kraft gave this ring as a gift."

The ring now sits in the Kremlin library, in Russia.

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