“Putin umer?” Is Putin dead?
The question is trending on Twitter after six days without a public sighting of the Russian president. On July 1st, Vladimir Putin met with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto to warn of the consequences of Finland joining NATO. Since then, Putin has disappeared from the public eye.
On Wednesday, a Russian news site reported that Putin had cancelled all of his remaining public appearances for the latter half of the week. By the time the news was released, Putin had already cancelled his appearance at a State Council meeting. In addition to indefinitely postponing the meeting, he also cancelled an appearance at an event northeastern Russia.
Putin’s sudden absence sparked the reappearance of what one Moscow correspondent referred to as “Schrodinger’s Putin.” Is he alive? Dead? With a mistress? Suffering from back trouble? Some writers pointed to a Russian language site, “PutinUmer.com,” which answers the question “Is Putin dead?” by telling readers to “look out the window” to see if people were dancing, happy, or lighting off fireworks. If not, the answer to the question is no.
Joking aside, for the most part, Putin’s cancellations have been met with remarkable nonchalance both on the part of government officials and observers.
“I wouldn’t dramatize the situation,” said the President of the Yakutia Region, Egor Borisov, who had been set to meet with Putin on Wednesday. “The head of state has a schedule which can be changed.”
Still, what specifically is taking up the president’s time this time around remains unclear, as different sources report different concerns. One source from the Kremlin told Russian news site Gazetta.ru that Putin wished to focus on the “international agenda,” specifically relations with Turkey and the ongoing situation with Abkhazia. This seems to contradict a post on the official Kremlin website describing a working meeting with the governor of Sevastopol, Sergey Menyailo, held to discuss emergency housing.
When asked about the meeting, Menyailo was vague about the precise meaning of “today,” calling it a loose concept that could refer either to late Tuesday or early Wednesday. The reply does little to clarify the matter of the president’s whereabouts. Despite the mystery, many journalists seem content to wait for the secretive president to reappear when he chooses.
Perhaps it’s because such absences have happened before.
While it takes effort for a head of state to vanish so completely from the news, this is far from the first time that that Russian president has disappeared from the public eye for a week or more without any explanation as to his whereabouts or the reason for his temporary disappearance.
For 11 days in March, 2015, Putin was similarly absent from the public view. At the time, an Austrian newspaper reported that Putin was suffering from back problems and had been treated by a Viennese specialist. However, the Kremlin’s refusal to confirm the story only fueled further speculation. Instead, the official website obfuscated the absence by posting minutes from past meetings as though they had only just taken place.
