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Whatever happened to Pootie-Poot?
Your theories are invited; I have none to offer…
It’s been more than a week now since anybody’s seen Russian President Vladimir Putin. He had a mundane meeting with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on March 5, and then … nothing. Since then, Putin hasn’t been seen in public, and the Russian blogosphere can talk about nothing else. Their president skipped a number of events—including one with his FSB bigwigs—and the Kazakhs, with whom Putin was supposed to meet this week, said the Russian president was ill. They quickly walked it back after the Kremlin denied it. The Kremlin began fiddling with Putin’s schedule. State television began broadcasting news of meetings planned for the future as if they had already happened in order to show that Putin was alive enough to attend meetings. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s mustachioed spokesman, has been stonewalling all week, insisting that his boss is not only breathing, but “breaking hands” with his manly handshake.
Unsurprisingly, this combination—active and seemingly frantic dissimulation, and flat denial that anything is amiss—is perfect for the Internet. #PutinIsDead began trending on Russian Twitter, and the Russian blogosphere began to churn out theories of what happened to Dear Shirtless Leader, each version more ludicrous than the next.
There was the anonymous letter claiming to be from an employee of elite Moscow hospital, who said that Putin had had a stroke and was languishing in the hospital. There were the frantic messages from people who know people in the Russian Embassy in London, saying that they had abandoned London en masse and that there would be a statement in three hours—a statement that never got made. There was the (false) report of the Kremlin press service asking foreign correspondents not to leave Moscow ahead of what would be a major announcement this weekend. A former Putin aide living in Washington posited that Putin had been overthrown by the siloviki (“strongmen”) in a palace coup. Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic and Putin’s most violent cheerleader, wrote a curious Instagram post about his loyalty to Putin, “whether he [Putin] is in office or not.”
Putin was even momentarily found, in the vicinity of Ticino, Switzerland, where, a local tabloid announced, Putin’s gymnast girlfriend Alina Kabayeva had given birth. Hopes were dashed when Peskov appeared again to say that this too was untrue. By this time, he was reaching new levels of exasperation. “Yes. We’ve already said this a hundred times,” he barked at a Reuters reporter who called to ask if Putin were, in fact, in good health. “This isn’t funny any more.”
Unsurprisingly, this combination—active and seemingly frantic dissimulation, and flat denial that anything is amiss—is perfect for the Internet. #PutinIsDead began trending on Russian Twitter, and the Russian blogosphere began to churn out theories of what happened to Dear Shirtless Leader, each version more ludicrous than the next.
There was the anonymous letter claiming to be from an employee of elite Moscow hospital, who said that Putin had had a stroke and was languishing in the hospital. There were the frantic messages from people who know people in the Russian Embassy in London, saying that they had abandoned London en masse and that there would be a statement in three hours—a statement that never got made. There was the (false) report of the Kremlin press service asking foreign correspondents not to leave Moscow ahead of what would be a major announcement this weekend. A former Putin aide living in Washington posited that Putin had been overthrown by the siloviki (“strongmen”) in a palace coup. Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic and Putin’s most violent cheerleader, wrote a curious Instagram post about his loyalty to Putin, “whether he [Putin] is in office or not.”
Putin was even momentarily found, in the vicinity of Ticino, Switzerland, where, a local tabloid announced, Putin’s gymnast girlfriend Alina Kabayeva had given birth. Hopes were dashed when Peskov appeared again to say that this too was untrue. By this time, he was reaching new levels of exasperation. “Yes. We’ve already said this a hundred times,” he barked at a Reuters reporter who called to ask if Putin were, in fact, in good health. “This isn’t funny any more.”
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/29097-why-its-impossible-for-the-kremlin-to-lie-about-putins-weird-disappearance
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