Putin's disappearance raises awkward questions about Russia's future

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Pity, if you can, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Over the past 36 hours, he's had to issue some of the most awkward statements of his long career as the other voice of Vladimir Putin.

On Thursday, Mr. Peskov had to respond to rumours that his boss was gravely ill, with some on the Internet speculating that the Russian President was dead, after an unnamed Kazakh official let slip that Mr. Putin's health was the reason a planned trip to Kazakhstan this week had been postponed. (Maybe we should instead be pitying, and worrying about the health of, the nameless Kazakh official.)

Mr. Putin is "absolutely healthy," Mr. Peskov told us. More than just ordinary healthy, in fact. The 62-year-old Mr. Putin's handshake is apparently "so strong he breaks hands with it."

So there. Russia's tiger-taming judoka of a president is just fine. He's in charge, and able to stare down NATO with one eye while freezing the ruble's fall with the other.

But Mr. Putin still hasn't appeared. In fact, he hasn't been seen in public since March 8, when he hosted a group of women in the Kremlin to mark International Women's Day. He hasn't been photographed outside the Kremlin walls since March 5.

And so on Friday, Mr. Peskov was left dismissing the latest rumour du jour: that the divorced Mr. Putin – who is usually seen doing vigorous things each night on Russian TV– was out of sight because he was in Switzerland attending the birth of a child with his girlfriend, who is alleged to be a 31-year-old Olympic gymnast.

"The information on a baby born to Vladimir Putin is false," Mr. Peskov was left saying, after several European news organizations reported on some curious bookings, and the presence of bodyguards, at an exclusive Swiss resort.

"I am going to ask people who have money to organize a contest on the best media rumour," Mr. Peskov added, sounding a little like someone who wished to be working somewhere besides the Kremlin on days like these.

Of course, Mr. Peskov's week would have been made easier if Mr. Putin had just gone for a stroll on Red Square. Or taken one of his famous shirtless rides on a horse. But all we got to see were some more photos, posted on the Kremlin website, of Mr. Putin meeting Russian officials in his office, photos that Internet sleuths quickly pointed out could have been taken almost any time in the past decade.

Even more interesting than the "Where's Putin?" meme is what it says about modern Russia. I've covered a few of these The-Leader-Is-Missing cases before. Three years ago, I reported on the "missing" Xi Jinping, when China's soon-to-be supremo was said to have "disappeared" for 10 days just before a key Communist Party congress. Mr. Xi emerged live and well and is believed to have been digging in on preparations to assume power while out of the spotlight. And every time North Korea's Kim Jong-il slipped out of the headlines for long enough, the media was left speculating about the chaos that would follow the Dear Leader's death. (When he did die in late 2012, power passed smoothly to his son Kim Jong-un.)

But that's China and North Korea. What the confusion and concern surrounding Mr. Putin's absence make clear is how close Russia is to joining that club of full-on dictatorships.

"It's still impossible for an outsider to tell where Putin is, or what he's up to. But it isn't too early to draw conclusions from this episode," Bloomberg View columnist Leonid Bershidsky wrote this week. "It offers evidence enough that Russia has become an outright dictatorship. No other kind of state would be so opaque, nor its citizens so preoccupied with their ruler."

I wouldn't go quite so far. Russia is an authoritarian state, and has been since shortly after Mr. Putin became President – for the first time – 15 years ago. But unlike true dictatorships, it still allows the opposition to exist. The murder of Putin critic Boris Nemtsov earlier this month was horrible, but it's worth noting that the Kremlin allowed tens of thousands of people to gather in the centre of Moscow to protest his death. That wouldn't happen on Tiananmen Square.

But, unlike in a democracy, no one outside the Kremlin walls has a clue as to what's happening inside them right now.

The swerving investigation into the Nemtsov murder provides a hint as to the power struggle taking place. Zaur Dadayev, the Chechen arrested in connection with the killing, was originally reported to have confessed, thus pointing the finger of blame at his boss, Chechnya's tough-guy President, Ramzan Kadyrov, who is a Putin protégé. Mr. Kadyrov quickly rushed to Mr. Dadayev's defence, calling him a "true Russian patriot."

Then, a day later, Mr. Putin hosted Mr. Kadyrov in the Kremlin, and awarded him a medal for his "professional achievements, public activities, and many years of diligent work." And then came stories indicating that Mr. Dadayev's confession had only come after he had been tortured by the Federal Security Service, the FSB.

The two pillars of Mr. Putin's time in office now appear to be colliding behind the scenes. Mr. Putin is an ex-FSB agent himself, and many among his inner circle also hail from the security services. But Mr. Putin's claim to having "stabilized" Russia (until recently) rests on the awkward peace he made in Chechnya after two wars there. That peace is ruled by Mr. Kadyrov.

Now the FSB and the Chechen President are butting heads, at the same time as Russia is also clashing with NATO, and trying to fend off an economic collapse. An awkward time for the Russian President, who has concentrated near-complete power in his hands, to go missing.

The similarity to China and North Korea, as Mr. Bershidsky noted, is clearest in how obsessed Russia and the world have become with the fate of Mr. Putin the individual.

Because – as in a full dictatorship – no one knows what would happen in Russia if and when Mr. Putin disappears for good.