Health Concerns for Russia\'s Alpha Dog

LONDON - The news from Russia this week has been mostly about President Vladimir V. Putin's sore back.

The Russian leader's health came under scrutiny after he canceled official engagements and pushed back the timing of a series of planned foreign visits.

Responding to speculation in the domestic and international press, a Putin aide eventually acknowledged that the Kremlin's man of action was suffering the effects of an old sporting injury.

Dmitry Peskov, his press secretary, denied that the president's activities had been restricted and grumpily suggested that the media was making a fuss about nothing. Lots of athletes suffered injuries, and Mr. Putin had merely pulled a muscle.

“Some media outlets' persistence should be put to better use,” he told the Interfax news agency.

That was a bit rich, coming from the spokesman of a politician who has cultivated a muscular, outdoor, macho image in more than a decade as Russia's strongman.

Whether riding bare-chested on Siberian ponies, hunting tigers or tagging whales, Mr. Putin, also a judo black belt, has always reflected the “Alpha-dog” label he was given in a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable. He has also gone out on the ice with Russian hockey pros and ridden a Harley Davidson alongside a biker gang.

Press reports suggested Mr. Putin's health problems might have been exacerbated by his latest jaunt, in which he took a motorized hang glider flight to get up close to a brace of Siberian cranes.

As the president approached his 60th birthday last month, there were suggestions that he should think of slowing down.

Timothy Heritage of Reuters reported from Moscow that the looming birthday had fed “a wave of biting satire is starting to hurt his macho image.”

“The satire is focused on the Internet,” Mr. Heritage wrote, “which has helped remove the shackles on criticism and has proved a growing influence in Russia as a forum wher e Putin's opponents announce their protests.”

He quoted Sergei Yolkin, a Russian cartoonist, as saying: “I even feel a bit sorry for him now because he's not as confident as he was a few years ago.”

Tim Kirby, an American commentator at Russia Today, speculated on the benefits and drawbacks of too much media exposure.

Reviewing a recent reality TV documentary on the Russian leader's home life, he wrote: “On YouTube people seem to want to watch videos of Putin's tough talk and sarcastic quips. Only his enemies take joy in videos where he flies with birds or does some other photo-op stuff.”

With questions outstanding over whether Mr. Putin was suffering anything worse than a sore back, the BBC provided a useful guide to the health of former leaders from the Soviet era, when such information was regarded as a state secret.

As my colleague Ellen Barry wrote from Moscow of the latest buzz about Mr. Putin's health: “The chatter is reminisc ent of the scrutiny that followed Soviet leaders, whose posture and skin tone were the subject of chatter among journalists, diplomats and analysts who pored over photographs in Western capitals.”