Putin re-emerges in public after rumours over 10-day absence

Vladimir Putin has reappeared in public after a mysterious 10-day absence that sparked frenzied speculation about the whereabouts of the Russian president, his health and mental wellbeing, and even his grip on power.

Mr Putin met Almazbek Atambayev, the president of Kyrgyzstan, for talks at the grandiose Constantine Palace in Saint Petersburg yesterday, in his first public appearance since March 5th.

Teasing assembled reporters, Mr Putin said that life “would be boring if there was no gossip”, but did not reveal where he had spent the last 10 days.

Russians are accustomed to seeing Mr Putin on state television every day and his unexplained disappearance unleashed a wave of conspiracy theories that underscored how little is known about the inner workings of Kremlin politics.

For most of the last fortnight, Russian media has bristled with rumours that Mr Putin had suffered a stroke, been ousted in a palace coup or was on paternity leave with his alleged Olympic gymnast girlfriend, Alina Kabayeva, who had given birth to his child in a Swiss maternity home.

Some commentators suspect the Kremlin concocted the mystery about Mr Putin's whereabouts to distract public attention from the killing of Boris Nemtsov, the Russian opposition politician, in a high-profile political murder that has sent shockwaves across the country.

Others say Mr Putin had been caught up in a power struggle in the Kremlin where Russia's powerful security agencies had confronted his main allies, Igor Sechin, the head of the state oil company Rosneft, and Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman president of Chechnya.

Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin's spokesman, who had fielded round-the-clock questions about the president's whereabouts without giving anything away over the preceding 10 days, poked fun at reporters. "So you've seen the broken, paralysed president who was captured by generals. He's only just flown in from Switzerland where he attended a birth as you know."

For his part, Mr Atambayev vouched for Mr Putin’s health, saying the Russian president had driven him around the gardens of the Constantine Palace in a guided tour shortly after arriving in Saint Petersburg in the afternoon.

Amid ongoing speculation about his whereabouts, Mr Putin took centre stage in a Rossiya 1 television documentary aired on Sunday night to mark the first anniversary of the secession referendum that paved the way for Russia to annex Crimea. In an alarming statement, Mr Putin said he had sent Russian forces to secure Crimea after Viktor Yanukovich, the Ukrainian president, was overthrown, and considered putting his country's nuclear arsenal on alert to deter intervention by the US and its allies.

Annexation of Crimea

The 2½-hour documentary,

Crimea: The Road to the Motherland

, featured lengthy interviews with Mr Putin interspersed with recreated action scenes to present the annexation of Crimea as a triumph of Kremlin planning led by the Russian president.

Mr Putin said Mr Yanukovich had been "ousted in an armed coup [in Kiev] masterminded by our American friends", and had been rescued by Russian military helicopters after a terrifying flight across Ukraine. "We never thought about severing Crimea from Ukraine until these events began – the government overthrow," he said.

Ilya Yashin, a Russian opposition activist, criticised Mr Putin for having an arrogant sense of impunity, warning the Russian president could face international trial for seizing foreign territory. Mr Putin was "absolutely confident in his own invulnerability and that he will never have to answer for anything", he wrote on Facebook. "Such an attitude comes to many people endowed with absolute power . . . but for many it can lead to dramatic mistakes and a sad finale."