[Sixstrings]

Bit of a strange, unexpected, news item. Putin's been canceling meetings and appearances and not seen for a week. People starting to ask questions. Some conspiracy theories over there that maybe there's been a coup. No official explanation, other than conjecture that he may be ill or have the flu. A week is a long time for a flu though, apparently he's missed important meetings with the FSB etc., and not been seen in public at all:

Putin, Said to Be ‘Perfectly Healthy,’ Is Also Nowhere to Be Seen

MOSCOW — Where’s Putin?

It was the question preoccupying Moscow and much of Russia on Friday, as speculation mounted about why President Vladimir V. Putin had not been seen in public since last week.

He canceled a trip to Kazakhstan; postponed a treaty signing with representatives from South Ossetia who were reportedly told not to bother to come to Moscow; and, unusually, was absent from a meeting of top officials from the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence service.

The last confirmed public sighting was at a meeting with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy on March 5 — although the Kremlin would have citizens think otherwise.

Given that the Kremlin borrows all manner of items from the Soviet playbook these days, there appeared to be an attempt to doctor the president’s timetable to show that all was well.

...

On Friday, the Kremlin released video and posted a still picture of Mr. Putin meeting with the president of Russia’s Supreme Court, but since the video was not live, questions lingered.

The simplest explanation appeared to come from an unidentified government source in Kazakhstan, who apparently did not get the memo, and told Reuters “it looks like he has fallen ill.”

Since half of Moscow seemed to be suffering from a particularly devastating strain of flu that knocks people on their backs for days at a time, that seemed the most likely explanation.

But there also appeared to be a certain reluctance to concede that Russia’s leader, who cultivates a macho image of being in good health at age 62, might have been felled like a mere mortal.

Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told any news media outlet that called (and most did) that his boss was in fine fettle, holding meetings and attending to his duties. “Perfectly healthy,” Mr. Peskov told one news agency. “Fine,” he told another.

Mr. Putin’s predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin, used to disappear frequently as well. But that was either because of drinking bouts or, in at least one instance, an undisclosed heart attack.

Mr. Peskov referenced that wryly this week, saying on the radio station Echo of Moscow that Mr. Putin’s grip could break hands and that the president was working “exhaustively” with documents.

Given the uneasy mood in Moscow — stemming both from Russia’s involvement in the war in Ukraine and the Feb. 27 killing of the opposition leader Boris Y. Nemtsov just steps from the Kremlin — much darker explanations have emerged.

Andrei Illarionov, a former presidential adviser, wrote a blog post suggesting that Mr. Putin had been overthrown by hard-liners in a palace coup and that Russians could anticipate an announcement soon saying that he was taking a well-deserved rest. Conspiracy theorists bombarded Facebook, Twitter and the rest of social media along similar veins.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/world/europe/russia-putin-seen-in-public.html?_r=1

[GHung]

" ....suggesting that Mr. Putin had been overthrown by hard-liners in a palace coup..."

Comforting thought.

From the Mirror: "But another theory, advanced by the lawyer of murdered Boris Nemtsov, was that the strongman may be lying low because he is "afraid" of an assassination bid.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news ... an-5323207

Seems plausible.

[Strummer]

He has a newborn baby, delivered this week in Switzerland by his girlfriend. But of course, the loathsome western propaganda machine must carry on.

[Sixstrings]

He has a newborn baby, delivered this week in Switzerland by his girlfriend. But of course, the loathsome western propaganda machine must carry on.

My sister gave birth to a baby and still kept doing the normal stuff she always does, and she's not even President of Russia.

It's comforting he's got a girlfriend in Switzerland, though. Here's a plan: get him some girlfriends set up in swanky oligarch condos on Miami beach and London, maybe he wouldn't nuke us all then.

(is this normal in Europe? presidents just disappear and nobody really knows for sure where they are, like there is no press entourage or anything?)

[Strummer]

He has a newborn baby, delivered this week in Switzerland by his girlfriend. But of course, the loathsome western propaganda machine must carry on.

My sister gave birth to a baby and still kept doing the normal stuff she always does, and she's not even President of Russia.

It's comforting he's got a girlfriend in Switzerland. Here's a plan: get him some girlfriends set up in swanky oligarch condos on Miami beach and in London, maybe he wouldn't nuke us all then.

You see, in civilized countries in Europe, you actually get a paid vacation for a few days when your wife/girlfriend delivers your baby. But I understand that must be a very strange and foreign concept for you American slaves.

[Strummer]

(is this normal in Europe? presidents just disappear and nobody really knows for sure where they are, like there is no press entourage or anything?)

He didn't "disappear". Since when does he have the obligation to inform the retarded western press about his every move? No one in Russia cared or was bothered by this supposed "disappearance".

[Sixstrings]

You mean MEN get maternity leave?

Man, sign me up for this socialism. Just don't hurtle the world into nuclear holocaust, please, while all we men are on maternity leave. Thank you.

Seriously -- is there no official confirmation at all? Where he is? I suppose this is plausible, to take some time off for family, but why no appearances at all. People don't talk, unless someone really hasn't been seen anywhere. There's no press corps over there that follows him? He couldn't have GONE to Switzerland, obviously. Even if he's taking some time off, it's just not good to have it questioned that he's missing.

Makes it look like there's some kind of trouble.

EDIT: I don't know guys, it's just odd, why is his spokesman "quelling rumors" about where the president is -- while really just talking in riddles.

Moscow (CNN)Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared in a series of photos released by the Kremlin on Friday after a week in which canceled engagements led to speculation over his health.

The three images showed Putin meeting with the head of the Supreme Court in Moscow on Friday, the Kremlin said. State broadcaster Russia 24 also aired video footage of the meeting.

CNN cannot independently confirm that the meeting took place as stated.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov sought to quell the rumors of ill health on Thursday, joking that they were down to "spring fever," Russia's state-run Tass news agency reported.

"When the sun comes up in spring, and as soon as spring is in the air, then the fever begins," Peskov said. "Someone dreams of (Rosneft CEO Igor) Sechin resignation, others -- of government resignation, while others have not seen President Putin on TV for several days," he said, according to Tass.

"We are calm on this fever, and respond to the questions with patience," Peskov said.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/13/world/russia-vladimir-putin-rumors/

Anyhow I'm actually trying to avoid Russia news, I just turned on Drudgereport and here's this thing on the main headline "where is Putin."

[Strummer]

He couldn't have GONE to Switzerland, obviously.

Of course he could, why not? There's this thing called "privacy", another foreign concept for the almighty USofA.

[Sixstrings]

He couldn't have GONE to Switzerland, obviously.

Of course he could, why not? There's this thing called "privacy", another foreign concept for the almighty USofA.

I would imagine that would get out in the press, wouldn't it, if he went to Switzerland?

Okay wait a minute, if he is taking family time then why didn't his press secretary just say that. This is confusing. There's a lot of mystery here, that delegation from South Ossetia just told "not to come" at the last minute, etc. Anyhow I'm not going to get out in the weeds on this, I assume he'll turn up in a few days.

The very scary reality behind the silly rumors of Putin’s death

Putin is almost certainly going to re-emerge in a few days looking none the worse for wear. But this isn't the first time rumors of this kind have caught on — and the fact that he can't cancel a couple of meetings without causing a frenzy of speculation hints at a deeper truth about Russia, and the state of Putin's regime.

These rumors stem from fear and uncertainty about what happens after Putin. No one knows who would assume power if he died, got sick, or otherwise left office. That instability is a real danger, even if the death rumors are probably false.

Why hasn't Putin been seen since March 5?

The rumors began on Wednesday after Putin cancelled a visit to Kazakhstan this week. An anonymous Kazakh government official told Reuters that "it looks like he has fallen ill."

...

Peskov's denial has not been enough to stop the rumors. Theories, both light-hearted and serious, swirled online and in different media outlets: Putin has had a stroke! Putin is recovering from plastic surgery! Putin is battling with his intelligence agency over the murder of Boris Nemtsov!

The idea that Putin would schedule plastic surgery for a week when he was supposed to have multiple public meetings seems highly implausible. And while it's possible that he's ill, it's equally likely that Putin is fine, and has withdrawn from public view for reasons of his own. The Brookings Institution's Hannah Thoburn told me that there was just no way to know the real reason for his absence from public life.
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/12/8205193/putin-death-rumors

[Strummer]

Okay wait a minute, if he is taking family time then why didn't his press secretary just say that. This is confusing.

Because it's his "unofficial" girlfriend having a baby. There's no obligation whatsoever to inform tabloid-reading idiots of these private matters.

[Ibon]

WTF with all this Putin obsession? You guys are worst than a bunch of Miami Cubans obsessing every time Fidel catches a cold.

There is another barometer out there that measures how far we are from any inflection point and that is how mundane the threads become. BAU seems extremely resilient when I check the mediocrity of some of these threads.

[Sixstrings]

Because it's his "unofficial" girlfriend having a baby. There's no obligation whatsoever to inform tabloid-reading idiots of these private matters.

I don't want to post too much because that's flooding the thread.

But okay what you just said makes sense to me, because Putin would be sensitive about advertising having an out of wedlock child, because he courts the very conservative religious orthodox elements in Russia. So he just wouldn't want to advertise it. That makes sense to me.

So okay but still -- maybe Merkel should try to call him or something, he's got the nuclear football, he CAN'T ever just disappear.

So see why wasn't THAT done. He could have just had a phone call with some world leader and that would end the rumors, if someone actually talked to him.

EDIT: still makes no sense though, canceling important meetings and there's no solid explanation for it and you've got Kazakstan saying he's ill. That makes no logical sense at all, yes it's wonderful to have a newborn, but you don't make a big mystery about it and everyone questioning if there's been a coup or is the president sick, etc. etc.

P.S. Russian humor is pretty funny:

“As soon as the sun comes out in the spring, as soon as it starts to smell of springtime, people get feverish,” explained Peskov to Russian news agency TASS. “Someone dreams up Sechin’s resignation, someone dreams up a resignation of the government and some people start thinking they haven’t seen Putin on TV in several days.”

In other words, "these aren't the droids you're looking for."

Point remains though -- strategically -- the LAST thing Putin ever wants is for people to think he is sick or that there is trouble. Simply trying to keep a girlfriend from the public isn't a logical reason to let Kazakstan tell everyone Putin is sick, and for there to be any rumors at all of any coup or trouble.

When Kim Jong Un would "disappear," he was doing clean sweeps of the regime. Boris Yeltsin "disappeared" due to his health problems. No dictator "disappears" for "maternity leave.".

So.. something is up.. Probably not a big deal something, but there's something swirling in the kremlin.

[Strummer]

So see why wasn't THAT done. He could have just had a phone call with some world leader and that would end the rumors, if someone actually talked to him.

How do you know that didn't happen? I'm pretty sure Merkel knew very well where he is, and sent a congratulationary SMS or something. The rumors are just a matter of the retarded western press and its even more retarded readers.

[Peak_Yeast]

Well Here In Denmark. You can get 1 year leave from work when you get a baby. And it can be shared between the man and the wife. You can get this both if you are under education or if having a job. Unemployed gets no help - well - they get welfare if they conform to the oppressive rules.

Also if you are fired when you are pregnant or there is connection with your pregnancy the employer get fined.

[Sixstrings]

CNBC report, they say "the signal is something is going on more than meets the eye," because Putin's spokesman says that he doesn't know when he will be seen in public again.

Where has President Putin Gone? | CNBC International
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHD5wQr-WXM

Well Here In Denmark. You can get 1 year leave from work when you get a baby. And it can be shared between the man and the wife. You can get this both if you are under education or if having a job. Unemployed gets no help - well - they get welfare if they conform to the oppressive rules.

Denmark's a nice place Yeast and does a lot of things right, one of the top countries in the world -- but this is off topic. Putin is not on "maternity leave," no way, I don't believe it. If he continues to be absent then that can move markets, etc. This isn't about just keeping a girlfriend secret either. Doesn't add up. EVEN IF HE IS SICK -- he'd never tell anyone he's sick. But someone in the Russian gov told the Kazaks, he's "taken ill." Bit of a mystery here.

And they released a still photo and video -- that was not live. So no live tv coverage at all. That's what the kim jong un regime was doing in his last absence, they'd maybe release a photo or something but nobody saw him for a while.

[Peak_Yeast]

Hehe Six. It was just for the benefit of some comment. Sorry for being off topic.

And no I do not believe for one second Putin is on maternity leave - even the idea makes me giggle.

He is probably having a meeting with the "family" who are concerned about all their stolen wealth being diminished by the cold war v.2 or sick as Kazakhstan suggests.

[GHung]

Maybe they just need more time to negotiate the ransom.

[Sixstrings]

He is probably having a meeting with the "family" who are concerned about all their stolen wealth being diminished by the cold war v.2 or sick as Kazakhstan suggests.

Mmmhm, the "family."

Well folks I guess we're on Putin Watch in this thread. If anyone spots president Putin, give us an update.

This could turn into a huge story, like one of those CNN stories when a kid gets lost down a well and we're on the edge of our seats for a month.

Or one of those missing Malaysian airliners.

Could Putin be in Kazakstan, with the missing airliner? Wait, no, the Kazaks say he isn't there.

edit: delete, I linked a business insider article that upon further examination, I think is bogus

Here's a good article in Time, suggesting the theory I espoused, this is like how when Kim Jong Un disappeared for a while -- it was palace intrigue, and infighting, and troubles. And then Kim Jong Un wiped half of them out, but he stayed hidden the whole time.

Kremlin Critics Fear Political ‘Hit List’ as Putin Drops Out of Sight

Rumors of a power struggle among Kremlin clans have fueled tensions since the murder of dissident Boris Nemtsov in Moscow

Early in the morning on March 9, Alexei Venediktov, one of Russia’s most prominent journalists, gathered a backpack full of his belongings, told his son to do the same and—fearing for their lives—both of them headed to a Moscow airport to catch a flight to Israel. It was not a bout of paranoia.

...

“We knew that there was a hit list,” he tells TIME a few days later, having returned to the capital and resumed working as editor of the radio station Echo of Moscow, one of the last broadcast news outlets where Russians can still hear direct criticism of President Vladimir Putin.

...

In the past two weeks, various warnings and threats to opposition figures have suggested that Nemtsov’s murder could be just the beginning of a broader campaign of political terror.

...

The most obvious target would be Venediktov. In early January, he was branded an enemy of Islam by the Kremlin’s loyal governor in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, who styles himself as the guardian of Muslims in Russia and around the world.

...

“If Putin makes a decision to physically eliminate me, it will not be easy for me to survive, not even in Europe,” Khodorkovsky told TIME in an interview this past fall in Berlin. “In his inner circle, there are people who are more and more inclined to the use of force, and we see that they carry out such operations.”

...

According to the Kremlin’s own rights watchdog, Dadaev showed signs of torture, including electrocution, when prison monitors visited him on March 10 at the FSB’s notorious detention center in Moscow. “He said wires were attached to his toes and electricity shot through them,” Andrei Babushkin, who oversees the penitentiary system within the Kremlin Council on Human Rights, said at a news conference in Moscow on Friday. “The injuries he showed us were consistent with this.”

...

“They are all his clans, his creations,” Venediktov says, referring to the FSB and the Chechen forces known as Kadyrovites. “Putin does not easily give up his own. He would need a very serious mound of evidence to really go after one of them.”

It is not clear whether Putin has seen any such evidence from the FSB against members of the Kadyrov clan. But in one of his last public appearances before dropping out of sight more than a week ago, Putin hinted that he takes the murder of Nemtsov more personally and more seriously than other “politically tinged” crimes, as he put it. “We need to rid Russia of the kind of shame and tragedy that we have just witnessed,” he told a gathering of Russian police commanders from around the country on March 4. “I’m talking about the insolent murder of Boris Nemtsov right in the center of the capital.”

Judging by the mood in Moscow, however, the fear of such insolence has only grown in the past week as Putin remains unseen. “The atmosphere right now in our country is very dangerous, very threatening,” says Nikolai Svanidze, another member of the Kremlin rights council. “It is an atmosphere of growing hatred and aggression,” he says. In response, the council has decided to call a meeting at the end of the month to provide the Kremlin with ideas on how to cool these tensions, and hopefully Putin will by then reemerge to receive their advice.
http://time.com/3743632/kremlin-hitlist-putin/

Wow, that is so byzantine complicated.

Okay, according to Time Magazine -- maybe Putin really is cracking down on the political clan that assassinated Nemtsov.

Is Putin the good guy, for once? Was he really doing something about this assassination and that's why Putin himself is laying low and in hiding now?

Well if that's the case then that's a good sign of something anyway, out of Putin, that he could get some real credit for out of the West. Do some more things like that and stop flying bombers over us, and work with us more on Ukraine and that could be some progress there.

(although Russians and the world still deserve better. It shouldn't be some massive breakthrough that finally a Russian president will do something about a political assassination right at the door of the kremlin. And now he's gotta fight some political mafia clan war, it's just so much a bunch of crap, I wish Russia would just clean all this stuff up for once and for all.

And most of all -- Westerners want Russia to be good guys too, and rule of law, and do the right thing but the mafia tactics MUST STOP across the board. We will give credit for progress, I would assume, but we will also NEVER ALLOW Russian mafia tactics USED ON US. It just needs to stop, it needs to stop in Russia at home, it needs to stop with what Russia does abroad.)

[Keith_McClary]

WTF with all this Putin obsession? You guys are worst than a bunch of Miami Cubans obsessing every time Fidel catches a cold.

There is another barometer out there that measures how far we are from any inflection point and that is how mundane the threads become. BAU seems extremely resilient when I check the mediocrity of some of these threads.

I think it's interesting how the MSM have jumped on this bandwagon. Here's a strange one from TIME:

Kremlin Critics Fear Political ‘Hit List’ as Putin Drops Out of Sight
Rumors of a power struggle among Kremlin clans have fueled tensions since the murder of dissident Boris Nemtsov in Moscow

Early in the morning on March 9, Alexei Venediktov, one of Russia’s most prominent journalists, gathered a backpack full of his belongings, told his son to do the same and—fearing for their lives—both of them headed to a Moscow airport to catch a flight to Israel. It was not a bout of paranoia. Venediktov’s close friend of many years, the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, had been gunned down near the Kremlin the previous week, and the subsequent twists in the investigation suggested that Venediktov could be next.
“We knew that there was a hit list,” he tells TIME a few days later, having returned to the capital and resumed working as editor of the radio station Echo of Moscow, one of the last broadcast news outlets where Russians can still hear direct criticism of President Vladimir Putin. Stout and good-humored, with an unruly crown of curly white hair, Venediktov, 59, would not reveal exactly who warned him that he was in danger. (There is, perhaps, some clue in the fact that he sits on the Interior Ministry’s Social Council, an advisory body to the national police.) But it would not take a genius in any case to see the clouds gathering above him.
In the past two weeks, various warnings and threats to opposition figures have suggested that Nemtsov’s murder could be just the beginning of a broader campaign of political terror. Reports of a hit list of dissidents have been circulating in the Russian press for days. Along with rumors of an unfolding struggle among security factions within the Kremlin, these events have created an atmosphere of fear unlike any the Russian capital has seen in years, at least since Putin’s re-election in 2012 inaugurated a broad crackdown on dissent. The President, for his part, has not helped calm the situation by disappearing from public view since March 5, an extremely long period for him to go missing even in the best of times.
...

It blathers on at length in the same vein. No explanation of how someone on "a hit list of dissidents" would remain on "an advisory body to the national police" in the supposed Putler dictatorship.

TIME describes him "Stout and good-humored, with an unruly crown of curly white hair" but strangely can't be bothered to find a photo.


(from the Interior ministry site)

Maybe he looks too intellectual/hippie for TIME's image of a pro-West dissident.

[Sixstrings]

Here's a strange one from TIME:

Kremlin Critics Fear Political ‘Hit List’ as Putin Drops Out of Sight
Rumors of a power struggle among Kremlin clans have fueled tensions since the murder of dissident Boris Nemtsov in Moscow

Keith, that article makes a lot of sense to me:

It is not clear whether Putin has seen any such evidence from the FSB against members of the Kadyrov clan. But in one of his last public appearances before dropping out of sight more than a week ago, Putin hinted that he takes the murder of Nemtsov more personally and more seriously than other “politically tinged” crimes, as he put it. “We need to rid Russia of the kind of shame and tragedy that we have just witnessed,” he told a gathering of Russian police commanders from around the country on March 4. “I’m talking about the insolent murder of Boris Nemtsov right in the center of the capital.”

I mean, we all want him to get to the bottom of Nemtsov's assassination -- SO MAYBE HE REALLY WAS AND IS DOING THAT, and that of course means he's got to round up some very powerful mafia clans that used to be his minions.

And now he's in hiding.

He's sort of the good guy, maybe.

I've got CNN on right now though and they're reporting on how the Pentagon is taking Russian bombers near the US very seriously now. Putin had better figure sh*t out and if he is a good guy or not, that's all I know, because he will have a cold war on his hands with us otherwise AND WE WILL WIN IT.

If Putin wants to be on the side of what is right, and normality, and rule of law, then get on board now. No sense in doing just a little of it and just fight a war with us anyway. Just clean the place up, get all that mafia out of there, and don't use any mafia tactics on the rest of the world and we can all be friends again.