Trump’s Plane Switch Ruse Pales in Comparison With Putin’s Secrecy
New York Times · LC · trust 56/100
President Trump’s Air Force One subterfuge pales in comparison to the secrecy surrounding Russia’s president, whose fixation on security has reached new heights in recent years.
Listen · 5:59 min Share full article A Russian state media photo of President Vladimir Putin in his office in the Kremlin last month. The secrecy around Mr. Putin’s movements means journalists have resorted to tracking his activity by assessing the wilting of the plants in his office. Credit... Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik By Anton Troianovski
Anton Troianovski writes about foreign policy in Washington. He was previously the Moscow bureau chief.
But it pales in comparison to the secrecy surrounding President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whose activity is shrouded in so much mystery that journalists have tried to track it by assessing the wilting of his office plants.
That is the method some reporters resorted to this year as they worked to ascertain whether the Russian leader’s televised meetings took place when the Kremlin said they did. The apparent reversal of the leaf decay seen in Mr. Putin’s plants suggested that the meetings actually took place in a different order and on different days.
For Mr. Putin, such deceit is par for the course. The White House, by contrast, has been criticized for not revealing Mr. Trump’s secret plane switch on a Turkish tarmac last month until The Washington Post broke the story this week.
“Compared to Russia,” said Mikhail Rubin, a Russian investigative reporter, “this is child’s play.”
Mr. Rubin and other reporters have found that Mr. Putin has outfitted his residences with nearly identical offices so that video footage of meetings does not reveal his location. His security apparatus has developed a presidential train, along with special railroad spurs and secret stations near at least three of his country residences, according to news reports and satellite images.
Government officials are forced to play along, keeping their meetings with Mr. Putin a secret until they are televised — sometimes weeks later — and then pretending they happened on that day.
In Russia, official falsehoods about the president’s whereabouts “are just a regular Tuesday,” said Farida Rustamova, a Russian journalist who covers the Kremlin from exile. She has reported that Mr. Putin’s interlocutors in his televised meetings sometimes speak of outdated events, in at least one case in clothes and a haircut incongruous with other public appearances.
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