CIA director Invoice Burns gave an unusually candid evaluation this week, when he advised attendees on the Aspen Institute's annual safety convention that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "completely too wholesome".
Burns was cautious to qualify apparently tongue-in-cheek remarks, saying they did not represent "a proper intelligence judgment."
However requested straight if Putin was unhealthy or unstable, he mentioned: "There are many rumours about President Putin's well being and so far as we will inform, he is completely too wholesome".
So what are we to make of hypothesis about Putin's well being? These rumours are nothing new.
His physique language, speech and gait have all been relentlessly scrutinised. And each time Putin disappears from public view for just a few days — and even makes a slight misstep, akin to he did just lately after touching down in Tehran — it will possibly set off a spherical of intense, tabloid-style hypothesis about his bodily wellbeing.
That is the character of Putinism, a type of post-modern dictatorship constructed round one man. The Kremlin has labored laborious to create an aura round Putin because the nation's sole problem-solver: He hosts an annual call-in present the place he actually takes on the position of pothole-fixer-in-chief.
And over the course of 20 years, he has consolidated energy, constructing a system that's pushed by the whims and fixations of 1 individual (apparent living proof: the invasion of Ukraine).
The Kremlin routinely ridicules any hypothesis about Putin's well being; on Thursday, spokesman Dmitry Peskov mentioned Putin felt "fantastic" and in "good well being" earlier than describing hypothesis on the contrary as "nothing however hoaxes."
However Burns' assertion, even when made in jest, maybe tells us much more about Western policymakers than it does about Putin's health.
For starters, it displays a powerful aspect of wishful considering in relation to the Kremlin chief. It means that probably the most worrying worldwide crises may merely evaporate if one individual — Putin — disappears from the world scene.
And that is a possible misreading of Russia. To make sure, the choice to invade Ukraine got here down to at least one individual: The Russian president, who appears to be pushed by his personal warped studying of historical past and a dose of imperial ambition.
And Russia's confrontation with the West has been pushed for years by the non-public grievances of an individual who famously lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But it surely's naive to hope that Putinism won't dwell on with out Putin.
Practically half a yr after the invasion, Putin's heavy battlefield losses haven't sparked, say, widespread draft resistance.
The Russian inhabitants — apart from hundreds who've been arrested in anti-war protests — has kind of passively accepted the financial ache of recent sanctions imposed on their nation.
Putin's scores, if the findings of state-run pollster WCIOM are to be believed, have really gone up for the reason that February 24 invasion.
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The CIA director's remarks, in context, mirror how difficult it's to know Putin, somebody whose decision-making processes are opaque to the skin world.