Putin's disappearance could be another genius ploy - here's why that's unlikely
Russia has been rife with rumors, including that he is dead or on paternity leave, while the government's slick propaganda machine has slipped up by airing old photos as well as news from the future.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin prepares to celebrate of the anniversary of annexing Crimea from Ukraine on Monday and independent Moscow outlet TV Rain says Putin is simply recovering from the flu. So maybe this is just Putin being Putin, keeping the world off balance.
"Putin is nothing if not capricious. He enjoys keeping people waiting ... and guessing, it's part of a display of the trappings of power," Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, noted to Business Insider on Friday.
The only issue is it's Russia that appears to be stumbling.
"I think it's unlikely this was any kind of ploy; apart from the unconfirmed reports that it was because of the birth of a new kid, frankly this left the Kremlin looking clumsy and actually attracted attention to Russia, its plans and intentions," Mark Galeotti, a New York University professor specializing in global affairs and Russian and Slavic studies, told Business Insider by email. "Yes, The Kremlin is by no means a stranger to maskirovka, strategic deception, but I see no reason to think this was anything of the sort."
Galeotti notes that "the longer before we get a real, credible evidence of Putin's health (so no still publicity shots, nor yet footage of insider meetings that could easily have been taken previously), then the more the speculation will rage, and the more likely it is that the tsar is, if not dead, somehow seriously impaired."
Putin has not been out of the Kremlin spotlight for more than a day since the early 2000s, when he dropped off the grid after a national tragedy (the sinking of the submarine Kursk sank in 2000) and in 2002 when terrorists took over a Moscow theater and more than 100 civilians died.
So his lengthy absence is unprecedented in that it has no obvious cause. Putin is, however, dealing with serious matters.
On February 27, gunman murdered prominent Russian opposition figure Boris Nemstov outside the Kremlin ‚ and Bremmer said that is it "extremely unlikely he ordered Nemtsov's killing, but it was clearly an inside job." He added that dealing with the situation "is surely [Putin's] top priority."
On March 12, Reuters reported that Nemtsov has "exposed rarely seen tensions between different camps inside President Vladimir Putin's system of rule."
"Some of Nemtsov's associates say his shooting is being used by one faction to send Putin a message that they are unhappy and need to be reckoned with," Reuters reported.
There are signs of tension in Putin's inner circle as well.Two people in Putin's circle of advisers confirmed to Bloomberg that the Russian president is "becoming more critical" of longtime confidant and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin after the 52-year-old made a series of moves that irked Putin.
And a biographer of Putin told Business Insider that factions within the Kremlin power structure have become visible, there likely to be some power change-ups, and that "fights over the number two position" - aka the position held by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev - have "exploded!"
But given that the disappearance has left the Kremlin looking clumsy, and that there is no clear gain for the Russian president to stay out of the spotlight for so long, odds are that there's more to Putin's vanishing act than the common cold.
"I'm not convinced that a man who is so aware of the importance of his person and his presence would want to sustain such a long absence when rumors are rampant," Hannah Thoburn, a Eurasia analyst with the Foreign Policy Initiative, told Business Insider in an email. "It exposes the inherent fragility of his system."