France’s supreme court, the Cour de Cassation, said it was legal for women to display their breasts in public so long as their “behaviour was incorporated into an act of political protest”.

Prosecutors in Paris had taken action against Ukrainian woman Iana Zhdanova, 32, a member of the feminist Femen movement.

She had stabbed a waxwork of Mr Putin at the Grévin museum in 2014 and had the words “Kill Putin” written on her chest.

Zhdanova’s lawyer, Marie Dosé, said the judges should have ruled that women can go topless whenever they want.

“Who decides that a woman’s chest is more sexual than a man’s?” she asked.