Where’s Putin? Fear of Ukrainian Missiles and of the Russian Street Has Kremlin Leader Playing a Vast Shell Game

After American soldiers seized Venezuela’s president in January and Israeli rockets killed Iran’s supreme leader in February, Vladimir Putin largely retreated to a secluded forest compound fortified against Ukrainian drones and missiles.At a park midway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, about half a billion dollars worth of Pantsir S-1 and S-2 ground-to-air missiles protect Russia’s president from Ukrainian attack. With 20 missile launchers ringing the Valdai compound, Mr. Putin plays a 1,000-mile long shell game. According to analysis by Radio Free Europe, he records meetings and interviews in an office that is a copy of his offices in presidential compounds at a Moscow suburb and at Sochi, a southern Russia resort city.In the latest twist to the century-old art of Kremlinology, Russian journalists poring over photographs are learning to differentiate among the three offices. Clues include: minute differences in placements of door handles and wall thermostats, grain patterns of wooden desk trays, and yellowing leaves of office plants, Chinese evergreens. President Vladimir Putin at the Valdai Discussion Club at the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, October 2, 2025. Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin pool via APAfter reviewing 700 videos plus travel records of state television employees, Radio Free Europe’s Systema investigative unit concluded: “The Kremlin has been dishonest about the president’s location hundreds of times in recent years.”Four years ago, at the start of Russia’s full bore attack on Ukraine, Mr. Putin largely withdrew to the security of his forest compound, at Valdai, according to analysis by the Radio Free Europe investigative team. Even so, Moscow claims that last December Ukraine launched a large — and ultimately unsuccessful — drone attack against the compound. Ukraine denies the charge.Recently, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has not responded to queries about the President’s offices. In 2020, he told a Russian investigative news site, Proekt, that there are no “identical offices.”The Kremlin and his suburban Moscow compound, Novo-Ogaryovo, are deemed exposed to attack. Equally exposed is Bocharov Ruchei, the presidential residence at central Sochi, a beach city long favored by the Moscow elites. President Vladimir Putin at the Eastern Economic Forum, Vladivostok, Russia, September 5, 2025. Stepan Pugachev/Roscongress Foundation via APBuilt in the early 1950s for Joseph Stalin, this presidential compound is less than half a mile from the Black Sea. Although Russian officials maintain a 2-mile security zone around the residence, Mr. Putin largely stopped going there, reports Agentsvo, an independent Russian exile news site.In the last two years, Ukraine has repeatedly attacked Sochi. Yesterday, a “black rain” of soot and oil particles fell on the city, the residue of fires burning after two Ukrainian air raids in four days on Tuapse. This major Russian oil export terminal is only 50 miles north of Sochi.The Kremlin’s game of musical offices comes as Mr. Putin’s popularity is eroded by the war’s toll and restrictions on the internet. Yesterday, state pollster VTsIOM reported that his approval rating has fallen to 65.6 percent, the lowest level since he ordered Russia’s full-fledged attack on Ukraine, in February 2022. Since then, Russia’s military has suffered 1.3 million Russian casualties — killed and wounded. This figure, widely accepted in the West, is 20 times the 68,500 Soviet soldiers killed and wounded during the Soviet Union’s decade-long occupation of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union then had a population of 288 million, double that of Russia today. In 1991, less than three years after Moscow pulled out of that highly unpopular war, the Soviet Union collapsed.President Putin at the Grand Palace at the Kremlin, May 10, 2025. Sergei Bobylev/RIA Novosti via APAcutely aware of this history, Mr. Putin has imposed ferocious censorship and, most recently, internet shutoffs.“For the average Russian, it’s a woeful picture when the internet doesn’t work: you can’t phone anyone; you can’t send videos; VPNs regularly stop working; you can’t pay with your bank cards; and you can’t take out money from the ATMs,” a Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center fellow, Tatiana Stanovaya, wrote Tuesday. Internet shutoffs speak of a weak leader, American-born British investor Bill Browder recently told London’s Times Radio. “Why has he cut off the internet in Moscow? Because he thinks that’s how Khamenei was discovered, targeted, and killed,” said Mr. Browder, once the largest foreign investor in Putin’s Russia. “So he has cut off the Internet because he thinks perhaps that Ukrainians or others could use it to track him down and kill him,” Mr. Browder added.“He is so afraid that he is no longer going to the Kremlin,” continued Mr. Browder. “These are not the acts of a man who is self confident.” Russia’s growing censorship breeds both distrust of state-controlled press and conspiracy theories. A recurring theory is that Russia’s 73-year-old leader has one or more body doubles. These men, the theory goes, are sent out for public appearances that might entail risk, to Russia-occupied Ukraine, for example.Mr. Putin, asked if he uses body doubles, told the nation in a televised press conference in December 2023 that he had “thought about it and decided that only one person should resemble myself and speak in my voice, and that person will be me.”The Victory Day military parade at Moscow, May 9, 2025, marking the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat during World War II. Maxim Bogovid/photo host agency RIA Novosti via APOne test will come May 9 at the military parade celebrating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. Taking a lesson from the assassination in 1981 of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt during a military parade, this reporter has noticed that Russian military officers typically ensure that all weapons entering Red Square for the parade are not loaded.Americans may be able to judge for themselves at the end of this year. Today, Kremlin spokesman Peskov said that Mr. Putin may go in December to the G20 Summit at Miami. In September President Trump said he would “love” to host Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping at the event, which will take place at the Trump National Doral Miami.

Where’s Putin? Fear of Ukrainian Missiles and of the Russian Street Has Kremlin Leader Playing a Vast Shell Game

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