So Putin isn't ill after all

You are not supposed to wish illness on any human being but there were probably millions of people living in the West who quietly felt relief, if not hope, when all the rumours began circulating that Putin was ill/terminally ill/suffering from blood cancer/Parkinson's etc etc. It was wishful thinking. Putin is very well and very healthy. So says Bill Burns, CIA director, although he admits he has no insider intelligence on the matter one way or the other which was a little surprising for the boss of the most powerful intelligence service in the western universe. Surely the CIA has a Putin doctor/nurse/chambermaid on the payroll? It seems not. But Burns, an immensely knowledgeable Putinologist after his years as US ambassador in Moscow as well as his focus on Russia over decades, reckons all the health rumours are just that. Rumours. He went to see Putin in Moscow prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 and didn't come away with any sense that he was suffering ill health. Putin was just angry. Burns had experienced this before when he was ambassador. Putin has for years been a man obsessed. But not because his doctors had told him he was facing a premature end. So all the newspaper and TV focus on his apparently wobbly walking and shaking hand and need for assistance when he gets up and swelling face was fun while it lasted. But it was probably all deliberately exaggerated by Putin to confuse the West and give everyone hope, only for it to be dashed. Not by Putin or by the Kremlin but by the leader of America's Central Intelligence Agency. Putin must be guffawing.