Russian internet imagines a future without Putin

This week Vladimir Putin disappeared from public view, fuelling a whirlwind of satirical speculation about his whereabouts. RFE/RL report

Russian president Vladimir Putin has not been seen in public since 5 March. The media started to speculate about his whereabouts after he postponed a trip to Kazakhstan and cancelled a series of scheduled meetings.

Assurances came from his press secretary Dmitry Peskov, who said there was “no reason to worry” and “everything is fine”, but an apparent attempt by the Kremlin to quell rumours of his bad health backfired after a photo they released was reported to be a week old.

On Friday the Kremlin press service said the president had met Vyacheslav Lebedev, the head of the Russian Supreme Court, and he was seen on Russian TV, but is still to make a public appearance.

Peskov said that despite Putin’s absence from the public eye he was still “holding meetings all the time”, “breaking hands” along the way – a reference to his strong handshake. He also accused those fuelling the rumours of suffering from “spring fever”.

With little else to go on the Russian rumour mill went into overdrive. People went through his meetings schedule with fine tooth comb looking for deviations, “highlighting the extent to which Russia’s political system depends on a single man”, the Moscow Times reported.

And social media went to new extremes as “Putin umer” or “Putin has died” started to trend and satirical songs, websites and memes sprung up across the web.

The website, putinumer.com was set up allowing users to repeatedly ask “has Putin died?” before generating a series of automatic responses, including “the information cannot be verified” and “no, but they say he has a sore back”.

And as it seemed like Twitter was determined to bury Putin some users began to imagine what a world without Putin might look like. Would there be a state funeral? How would state TV channels cover the news? Some drew comparisons to North Korea.

One cartoon questioned if Putin would be able to show up for his final meeting on time. The Russian president is notorious for running late. Translation: “It’s already nearing noon ... and still no Putin!”

But not everyone appreciated the satire. Ivor Crotty, head of social media for Russia Today, called the jokes “ugly and macabre”, pushed by the liberal side of the Russia’s twitterati. Other took to Twitter to complain about the jokes being in bad taste, irrespective of people’s individual feelings towards the president.

A version of this article first appeared on RFE/RL

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