Russian state TV has shown what it said was new footage of Vladimir Putin in his first public appearance after a week-long absence prompted widespread speculation that the Russian president was suffering from ill health.

Television channel NTV showed footage on Friday of Putin meeting with supreme court president Vyacheslav Lebedev in the Novo-Ogaryovo presidential residence outside Moscow to discuss judicial reforms. Putin appeared to be in decent health as he quietly conferred with Lebedev, who reportedly warned the president that bankruptcy proceedings would likely become more frequent due to the country’s economic problems.

The meeting was also reported on the news section of the Kremlin website, which in recent days has published photographs of old meetings in an apparent attempt to cover up Putin’s absence.

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The supreme court press secretary told the RBK newspaper that the two had met on Friday morning, although many on social media continued to doubt. The hashtags “#WhereIsPutin” and a Russian phrase meaning “Putin died” have been trending in recent days.

The Kremlin also announced Putin would convene with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St Petersburg on Monday, a meeting that is sure to be closely watched for proof of life.

Doubts about the 62-year-old’s health first arose on Wednesday after he postponed a visit to Astana to meet with the strongman leaders of Belarus and Kazakhstan. A Kazakh government source told Reuters that “it looks like [Putin] has fallen ill”.

Russia’s leader also reportedly canceled talks with officials from Georgia’s breakaway republic of South Ossetia on Wednesday. The last time he had been seen prior to Friday was on 5 March, when he held a meeting and press conference with Italian PM Matteo Renzi.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin was feeling fine, telling radio station Ekho Moskvy on Thursday that the president was “constantly in meetings, but they are not all public.” Asked if Putin’s handshake was still firm – a reference to a phrase often used by Boris Yeltsin’s press secretary to hide that president’s many health problems – Peskov said it was strong enough to “break hands”.

But Russian media caught the presidential website passing off old photographs as new ones during his unexplained absence. Two sources close to the Kremlin reportedly told RBK that a meeting with the governor of the Yamal-Nenets region had not happened on Tuesday as was reported , and local media said a meeting reported on Wednesday with the governor of Karelia had actually happened a week earlier.

The speculation over the president’s brief disappearance from view appears to have had little impact on his overall popularity. At the end of a week of rumour and conjecture, the state-run VTsIOM pollster reported on Friday that 88% of Russian approved of Putin’s job performance – an all-time record.



