Posts
I fear announcements of Vladimir Putin's death are exagerrated (sorry for the misquote of Mark Twain)
The western media is beyond insane. Why let officials statements get in the way of some rumourmongering and a chance to paint a picture of a Soviet-style super-secretive Kremlin.
Is President Vladimir Putin dead? The internet certainly thinks so
The western media is beyond insane. Why let officials statements get in the way of some rumourmongering and a chance to paint a picture of a Soviet-style super-secretive Kremlin.
Is President Vladimir Putin dead? The internet certainly thinks so
11
March, 2015
RUSSIA’S
internet is abuzz with rumour: President Vladimir Putin has not been
seen for eight days. Heart attack? Cancer? Is their controversial
leader actually dead?
His
press secretary Dmitry Peskov asserts: “There is no reason to worry
... everything is fine”.
But
it seems official statements out of the Kremlin carry little
currency.
“Putin
Umer” (Putin is dead) is the trending search subject across Russia.
#PutinIsDead is exploding across Twitter.
Blogs
have been posting serious claims: One says it has had contact from a
source inside a Moscow hospital saying Putin has suffered a stroke.
Others
reject this, saying instead the actual problem is advanced cancer.
Rumourmongering
aside, many Russians are embracing the idea. For fun.
Speculation
ranges from bare-chested state funerals to speculation over whether
or not the notoriously tardy president will make it to the pearly
gates on time.
On
March 11, Kremlin officials issued photographs of the President
attending a meeting with the head of the Republic of Karelia,
claiming the photos were taken that day.
Later,
it was discovered that meeting had actually taken place a week
earlier.
OOPS ... Originally dated March 12 as the Kremlin’s press service attempted to dispel the rumours about Putin's health, this photo was actually taken as early as March 5. Source: AP Source: AP
Official
Moscow mouthpieces such as ITAR-TASS and RT have been continuing to
report as though Putin was still very much in the public spotlight:
Putin’s
press office is pushing the line that their leader is perfectly
healthy.
Peskov’s
message is: He’s fine, he’s busy, and he’s still “crushing
fingers” with his handshake.
This
statement is being seen by some observers as coded evidence the
President is unwell. The
Moscow Times reports that
whenever Boris Yeltsin - president of post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s
— became ill, his spokesman asserted “his handshake was firm”
and that he was “working with documents.”
Internauci: W Moskwie gęsto od helikopterów. Lądują w FSB i centrum...
“As
soon as the sun comes out in the spring, as soon as it starts to
smell of springtime, people get feverish,” Peskov explained.
“Someone dreams up
Sechin stepping down, others invent a big ministerial resignation,
and some people start thinking they haven’t seen Putin on TV in
several days.”
But
the press office went on to say Putin would miss a meeting with the
head of the FSB — the new name for the old Soviet KGB spy agency.
And
the number of cancelled meetings keeps mounting. Putin’s office
yesterday cancelled a scheduled visit to Kazakhstan. A Kazakh
government official told Reuters: “It looks like he (Putin) has
fallen ill.”
A
Kremlin press release announcing this visit has simply been deleted,
though it can still be found in Google Cache.
Putin
also was expected to be joined by the President of Belarus, Alexander
Lukashenko, tonight, for talks.
The
intensity of the rumours surged early yesterday when news blog
Russkiy Monitor claimed it has been contacted by an anonymous source
inside the elite Moscow Central Clinical Hospital. The source
reportedly claimed that the controversial leader had been diagnosed
with ischemic stroke — a blood clot which has lodged in an artery.
It is usually associated with high cholesterol levels and heart
disease.
The
charismatic Russian President was last seen with a group of women at
the Kremlin on March 8, celebrating International Women’s Day.
His
last meeting with media was March 5 at a press conference with
Italian Prime Minister Mattero Renzi.
But
amid the humour is a real sense of fear.
Moscow
residents have been posting footage and photos of “unusual”
military helicopter activity around the city’s central halls of
power.
Moscow’s
Ukrainian enemies have seized on such speculation:
Putin,
ever a master player on the world stage, remains silent.
Which
is unusual in itself.
@JamieSeidel
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.