Putin with Supreme Court chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev during their meeting at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow. Russian state television broadcast footage which it said was of Putin meeting Lebedev yesterday.
DPA/Moscow
The Kremlin has published new footage of Vladimir Putin, as rumours swirled that the Russian president had not appeared in public for a week.
Pictures broadcast on state television showed Putin meeting with Russia’s Supreme Court chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev.
Photos and a transcript of the meeting in the president’s residence outside Moscow were also published on the Kremlin’s website.
Putin cancelled a trip to Kazakhstan without explanation earlier this week, prompting speculation that he was ill.
Russian media reported that the president had not appeared in public for almost a week and that photos and videos published by the Kremlin were based on archive material.
It could not be independently confirmed if yesterday’s footage was from the same day.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has ridiculed the rumours as signs of “spring fever” and said that Putin was just working very hard.
The speculation comes at a time of political tension in Moscow after the murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down just outside the Kremlin two weeks ago.
Five Chechens have been arrested in connection with the killing.
Russian authorities failed to come up with a compelling motive, prompting speculation that the murder was either ordered by the Kremlin or by a hard-line faction inside it that opposes Putin.
Yesterday Peskov also denied media speculation that the president had cancelled meetings because his girlfriend had given birth to their child.
“This information does not conform with reality,” Peskov told the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.
Swiss media, including the Neue Zuercher Zeitung newspaper, had quoted from unnamed doctors and local politicians as saying that Alina Kabayeva, a former gymnast and lawmaker, had given birth to the president’s child in a private clinic near Lugano.
The Kremlin has over the past years regularly denied reports linking Putin and Kabayeva.
Putin announced in 2013 his divorce from Lyudmila Putina after 30 years of marriage.
Peskov also said that Putin will watch a documentary film about the return of Crimea to Russia when it is broadcast on state television tomorrow.
The Kremlin also announced that Putin will meet the president of Kyrgyzstan on Monday in Saint Petersburg.
