WASHINGTON — Russian President Vladimir Putin has always been fond of macho displays of personal virility and strength. Just months into his first term as the nation’s leader, , the Chechen capital that had been devastated under his direction. He has been photographed and hunting, .
Some on the American right fawned at those displays, especially during the Obama years. “People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil,” , deriding then-President Barack Obama for his “mom jeans.”
But the shows of machismo disappeared long ago from the Kremlin’s propaganda repertoire, replaced by carefully-managed images and videos of Putin that have only stoked questions about the 69-year-old’s health. The relentless speculation led to a remarkable, and rare, response from the Kremlin over the weekend.
“President Vladimir Putin makes public appearances on a daily basis,” Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov told a French outlet on Sunday, . “You can see him on TV screens, read and listen to his speeches. I don’t think that a sane person can suspect any signs of an illness or ailment in this man.”
Given the extent to which Putin’s image is managed inside Russia, the statement amounted to an astonishing acknowledgment of a discourse that has become rampant beyond Russia’s borders.
“I’ll leave it on the conscience of those who disseminate such rumors despite daily opportunities for everyone to see how he and others look like,” Lavrov — a reliable Putin ally in an increasingly cloistered Kremlin — added.
Last week, the British tabloid Sunday Daily Star touted a “world exclusive” that had an unnamed British intelligence agent predicting the Russian strongman’s imminent demise.
“Putin is very ill and when he dies his death will be kept secret for weeks, if not months,” . “There is also the possibility that he is already dead. It’s impossible to know. It is believed that Putin has employed body doubles in the past when he has been unwell and the Kremlin could be doing so now.”
Such speculation is usually off-limits for world leaders, but the brutal invasion of Ukraine has turned Russia into a pariah whose leader, no longer enjoys the benefits of such norms.
Of course, the acute curiosity does not exactly amount to a diagnosis, especially at a time rife with misinformation. “Suits lots of people’s interests to spread the rumors, and we know there are always lots of groups vying for power around the Kremlin in Russia,” Russia expert Ian Garner told Yahoo News. “However, my best guess is that most of these rumors are the feverish products of western speculation. They grip Western audiences — they’re classic tabloid schlock.”
The guessing game almost resembles something out of “The Death of Stalin,” , whom Putin admires and has in some ways imitated.
Putin could have cancer — or . Or maybe long COVID. Every photograph and video clip is parsed on social media by amateur Kremlinologists. Meanwhile, an anonymous user on the Telegram social media network claiming to be a Russian security intelligence officer .
Some of the rumors were fueled by the with other Kremlin officials during the first phase of the Ukraine invasion. During a meeting with defense minister Sergei Shoigu in late April, he gripped the edges of a table and looked ill at ease. Some two weeks later, at a Victory Day parade in Red Square, he again failed to project the vision of strength long associated with the Russian leader.
Earlier this month, the magazine News Lines published an account of a Kremlin-adjacent oligarch who had been . The outlet proposed that he was potentially suffering from lymphoma, which afflicts blood cells.
While such reports could be utter fiction, they also underscore how thoroughly Russia has devolved into an authoritarian regime almost entirely dependent on the fate of a single man.
“The only way things change is if there is a crisis event that shifts the landscape,” says former CIA officer John Sipher, who served in Moscow during the Cold War. “One might be the use of nuclear weapons. The other might be real evidence of his health deteriorating.”
Putin’s counterpart in Kyiv, meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky, has become an international icon, his scruffy beard now as much of a symbol as Winston Churchill’s cigar was in an earlier era. Despite looking tired from long days and nights in his bunker, Zelensky appears to be of sound health.