CIA Director Bill Burns made an unusually candid assessment this week, when he told attendees at the Aspen Institute’s annual security conference that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “totally healthy.”
Burns was careful to qualify seemingly tongue-in-cheek comments, saying they did not constitute “a formal judgment of intelligence.”
But asked directly if Putin was ill or unstable, he said: “There are a lot of rumors about President Putin’s health, and as far as we can tell, he is too healthy.”
There is constant speculation about the health of Russian President Vladimir Putin. (AP)
So what are we to make of the speculation about Putin’s health? These rumors are nothing new.
His body language, speech and gait have been scrutinized endlessly. And every time Putin disappears from public view for a few days, or even makes a small misstep, as he recently did after landing in Tehran, it can trigger a round of intense tabloid-style speculation about their physical well-being.
This is the nature of Putinism, a kind of postmodern dictatorship built around one man. The Kremlin has worked hard to create an aura around Putin as the country’s only problem-solver: He hosts an annual call-in show where he literally takes on the role of pothole repairer-in-chief.
And over the course of two decades, he has consolidated power, building a system driven by one person’s whims and fixations (case in point: the invasion of Ukraine).
The Kremlin routinely scoffs at any speculation about Putin’s health; on Thursday, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin was “well” and in “good health” before calling speculation to the contrary “nothing but hoax.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, left, has insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin is fine. (AP)
But Burns’s statement, even if made in jest, may say more about Western policymakers than it does about Putin’s fitness.
For starters, it reflects a strong element of wishful thinking when it comes to the Kremlin leader. It suggests that the most troubling international crises might simply evaporate if one person, Putin, disappears from the world stage.
And this is a possible misinterpretation of Russia. The decision to invade Ukraine certainly came down to one person: the Russian president, who appears to be driven by his own warped reading of history and a dose of imperial ambition.
And Russia’s confrontation with the West has been driven for years by the personal grievances of a man who famously lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But it is naive to expect that Putinism cannot live without Putin.
Almost half a year after the invasion, Putin’s heavy losses on the battlefield have not, for example, led to widespread resistance to the project.
President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has not sparked widespread opposition in Russia or widespread resistance. (AP)
The Russian population — with the exception of the thousands who have been arrested in anti-war protests — has more or less passively accepted the economic pain of the new sanctions imposed on their country.
Putin’s approval ratings, if the findings of the state-run WCIOM poll are to be believed, have actually increased since the February 24 invasion.
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The CIA director’s statements, in context, reflect the challenge of understanding Putin, someone whose decision-making processes are opaque to the outside world.