Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the presidential administration, has refuted rumors that President Vladimir Putin has fallen ill, slon.ru reported.
Earlier a source in the government of Kazakhstan told Reuters that Putin was going to miss the Eurasian Customs Union summit in Astana scheduled for March 13 due to illness. Aside from Putin, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenka were going to take part. The meeting will be delayed a few days.
Slon.ru printed a correction at the bottom of their story regarding a photo with a story dated today, March 11 about a meeting between Aleksandr Khudilaynen of the Republic of Karelia. In fact it was taken on March 4, as a Karelian newspaper reported.
But we could point out that means that the photo that was supposed to show Putin was well and taking meetings today has just been shown to be dated a week earlier.
Yesterday, March 10, Putin was shown meeting with Dmitry Kobylkin, governor of the Yamal-Nenetsky Autonomous Region.
Kobylkin covered the meeting on his own web site, using the same picture.
Putin could have problems with the Eurasian Customs Union, which has only two of Russia's allies willing to join it so far.
But he may be preoccupied with matters in the Kremlin, whether the uproar around the investigation into the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, or other stresses.