MOSCOW – Vladimir Putin has surrounded himself with such a dense fog of secrecy that it is now unclear where he lives, how many children or lovers he has, if his health is deteriorating or he intends to stay in power.
The old KGB man’s love of secrecy has long promoted rumors and conspiracy theories that would quietly run around Moscow. But 2020 was the year in which the rumors were out of control. Encouraged by the omnipotence of the online rumor mill, the Russian media are now daring to commit themselves to publication.
Tabloids soared this year in stories that the Russian president was ill and ready to leave the Kremlin. After Putin, 68, coughed during a meeting with the government on November 19, the gossip became too much.
Some claim the president is suffering from cancer, while others have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. A video of Putin playing absent-mindedly with a folder in October sparked rumors that he was suffering from some degenerative condition.
As pro-Putin ideologues often emphasize ‘Russia is Putin’, media reports have analyzed Putin’s health as an important issue in Russia’s future.
All this without a little evidence. The closest thing you get to an official health report in the Kremlin is an occasional shirtless photo shoot.
Professor Valery Solovey, who has become one of the most notorious sensationalists in Moscow, sparked speculation on YouTube this year, claiming that Putin intended to quit at some point due to some ‘force majeure’.
The speculation about Putin’s long-term health appears to be at odds with his decision to pass legislation allowing him to remain in power until 2036. Work on it formally began last year, and he decided to do so with ‘ a rubber stamp to stamp. nationwide referendum during the summer that was not legally necessary, but Putin offered the chance to show that he was still the boss when, as expected, he won the referendum comfortably.
The power movement did not suppress the speculation among Moscow’s elite, where the names of potential successors are constantly buzzing.
On Radio Echo of Moscow, known as Moscow’s ear, editor-in-chief Aleksey Venediktov reports that the two leading candidates are former President Dmitry Medvedev, now Vice-President of the Security Council, and Sergei Naryshkin, Director of Foreign Affairs. Intelligence.
Others claim that there will be another Putin after Putin. The president’s cousin, Roman Putin, apparently has big political ambitions – the businessman with the famous name founded a new political party this month called ‘Russia without corruption’.
The speculation about Putin’s intentions was further ignited in November when the Duma – the Russian Kremlin – friendly parliament – passed the first reading of a bill giving the Russian presidents and their families immunity from prosecution after leaving office.
Vladimir Solovyov, a well-connected Kommersant newspaper commentator, says Putin left Russia with a terrible mess picture. “This year he changed the constitution to ensure more conditions, but now he is missing out more and says he does not know if he will take candidates again in 2024,” he said.
Solovyov told The Daily Beast that he – and many others – assumed Putin would try to hand over power to a close ally and remain behind the scenes a powerful figure like Nursultan Nazarbayev did in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan . Nazarbayev stepped down as president after nearly 20 years, but retained his position as head of the Security Council and ‘power behind the throne’.
Seeing how Putin puts his support behind Alexander Lukashenko, whose post-Soviet population in Belarus is trying to force him out of office, Solovyov’s analysis has changed.
“If we previously thought he would choose a peaceful way to transfer power, as in Kazakhstan, it now looks like he will choose the Belarusian bloody and violent scenario,” he said.
Putin has already stressed protests this year and decided that even one-man protests are unacceptable.
The core of Putin’s strategy has remained unchanged for decades: the Russian president has brought former KGB officers like him into public life in all key management areas to provide security for what he calls the vertical power.
More and more public debates in Russia are being defined as espionage intrigue. Reports, myths, legends about Putin’s place, the business life of his collaborators, his personal life are described by the government as a espionage story and not as a matter of public information that they should share.
Where, for example, is Putin driving out the pandemic that has already plunged his popularity?
No one knows. One media report this year claims that Putin built an exact replica of his Kremlin office in Sochi to keep his place hidden, even for people he talks to on camera. Officials indicated that the misinformation was spread by foreign spy agencies.
Putin is also believed to have a secret refuge in the remote Altai Mountains near the border with Mongolia.
Any taxi driver in the Republic of Altai, in Siberia, reckons they know the approximate location of Putin’s residence. According to them, it is about 600 kilometers on the Chuisky highway, and he is there regularly. The constant helicopters in the air create a local belief that Putin spent much of his spring and summer quarantine in the mountains of Altai, but of course no one knows.
Putin’s private life has also been hidden for decades, which has led to much speculation over the years, but it has also accelerated in recent months.
In November, several media reports suggested that Putin had a secret daughter in St. Petersburg with Svetlana Krivonogikh. The story raised curiosity about the teenager’s life, but also raised questions about corruption.
How did Putin’s alleged lover – a former cleaner – acquire a significant stake in Bank Rossiya, a bank run by some of Putin’s longtime partners?
The U.S. Treasury approved Bank Rossiya’s owners and partners in 2014 on the day the Russian parliament passed a law allowing Crimea into the Russian Federation.
Corruption has been a feature of elite Russian circles since the Soviet era. “No one is surprised anymore that the best men in power are corrupt,” Boris Vishnevsky, deputy to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, told The Daily Beast. “But more and more millions of people are watching Alexey Navalny’s independent investigations to learn the details.”
Navalny’s online expositions and his political campaign on the ground effectively made him the leader of the opposition.
And here the espionage games come into play again.
Navalny was poisoned with a dose of Novichok while outside the east, in Siberia, where anti-Putin demonstrations increased. Navalny survived, but in early September, 77 percent of the Russian population was aware of the assassination attempt.
Bellingcat has published a detailed report of the attack, which contains specific names of Russian secret service agents who were pursuing the opposition leader when he was poisoned. It looked like damning evidence that the security services had to blame.
When confronted by this report during his annual press conference, he did not deny the main points in the report that Navalny was persecuted and that the cell phone records mentioned in the report actually belonged to the Federal Security Service, FSB officers. But the espionage games deepened from there.
“The patient from a clinic in Berlin has the support of American intelligence services,” Putin said, not mentioning Navalny, who is receiving treatment in Germany. “That is why the Russian special services have to track him down.”
The Russian president claims that Bellingcat, CNN, the Insider and The mirror helped U.S. intelligence agents “legalize” disinformation from foreign spies.
Putin believes he and his secret services surpassed Navalny.
The president rejects all attempts at openness, including about his own family life, as ‘tricks’ in the information war.
A former MP, Dmitry Gudkov, is convinced that public frustration with Putin will only increase, especially since even the FSB agents do not want to end it. “There is no need to find the truth about Putin’s agents. The data of cell phone calls can be purchased without any problems,” Gudkov told The Daily Beast.
Putin relies on the espionage games of his FSB agents to secure his future, but in a world of online reports and whirlwind rumors that undermine all their authority, his hopes of maintaining the pretext drop by the day.