Thanks to covid-19, Vladimir Putin has become almost invisible

FRESH FROMTV victories in Tokyo, Russian Olympic medalists were preparing for a reception with Vladimir Putin earlier this month when they were told they would spend a week in quarantine before meeting the president. “I still can’t believe I’ll have to sit in one room for seven days,” Angelina Melnikova, a gymnast, wrote on social media. But the requirement wasn’t new: senior officials, journalists and even veterans of the second world war have had to self-isolate before coming within breathing distance of the man who has stood at Russia’s helm for over two decades, and who next week turns 69.When Russia first recorded a surge in coronavirus cases in March last year, Mr Putin donned a yellow hazmat suit to visit Moscow’s main covid-19 hospital. State cameras captured him taking selfies with staff and shaking hands with the hospital’s chief physician, Denis Protsenko. “No head of state has so far dared to come so close to the infected,” gushed the Kremlin’s chief propagandist, Dmitry Kiselyov, on his Sunday night news show. All par for the course for a strongman who has built his reputation on action-man stunts.