Quite why Putin should still be so petrified of Covid, it’s difficult to say. He may be 69 years old, but he’s hardly overweight – and surely to goodness he’s vaccinated. Even if Russian vaccines are inferior to Western ones, they can’t be completely useless.
What makes his behaviour all the more striking is that it’s so comically at odds with his image. For 25 years Putin has taken tremendous care to promote the idea that he is blisteringly, indomitably macho. Hence the endless photos of him doing judo, riding bare-chested, holding a leopard cub, bathing in icy lakes, or sitting behind the controls of a fighter jet.
Russian media, meanwhile, have been all too eager to collude in this effort. In 2007 a Russian tabloid ran a photo of a shirtless Putin flexing his muscles, beneath the headline, “Be Like Putin”. The following year, a Russian news channel claimed that Putin had heroically saved the lives of a TV crew by shooting a Siberian tiger just as it was poised to attack them.
Yet now, it seems, this fearless hardman is so terrified of a few germs wafting his way that he has to conduct meetings by semaphore.
Maybe it’s to do with his height. In 2020, a study in Singapore suggested that short people are at greater risk from Covid. Clearly this would have alarmed Putin. Because, for all his undoubted prowess at judo, shooting, fishing and various other sporting activities, he is unlikely to receive a call-up to the Russian basketball team.
Then again, not even people who have met Putin can be sure what height he is, thanks to his insistence on standing at the opposite end of the room. Perhaps he just looks small because he’s so far away.
How to solve the refugee crisis
Should we throw open our borders to large numbers of Ukrainian refugees? Naturally we want to do all we can to help. But it’s perfectly reasonable for the British public to ask how exactly all these thousands of refugees would be housed.
Thankfully, however, I have a simple solution. Let’s set up an exchange programme. For each refugee we allow into our country from Ukraine, we send a supporter of Stop the War in the opposite direction.
It’s a win-win situation. The latter, in particular, should be delighted. Over the past week, supporters of Stop the War have been subjected to some dreadfully unfair criticism, suggesting that they’re nothing more than a squalid little pack of Putin apologists – merely because they blamed the conflict on “Nato expansion”, accused the British Government of playing “a provocative role in the present crisis”, and expressed sympathy for “Russia’s security concerns”.
Understandably, supporters of Stop the War have been horrified by these appalling attempts to traduce them. Which is why I’m so keen to help them prove their critics wrong. My exchange scheme would allow them to demonstrate that, far from a rabble of hypocritical, anti-Western, hard-Left cranks, they are the honourable, compassionate campaigners for peace they’ve always professed to be. I for one am confident that they will seize this golden opportunity to broadcast their noble anti-war message to the people who need to hear it most.
After all, it’s no use holding an anti-war rally in London, 1,500 miles from the action. They should hold it in front of a Russian tank, instead.
‘Way of the World’ is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines while aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday
