Russian President Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir PutinReuters

Rumors are flying fast and furious that 62-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin has fallen ill or is coming under a plot to depose him, after the Russian premier has missed a series of meetings and old photographs have been published to cover up his long absence.

Putin has been notably out of the public eye since a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi last Thursday, when he seemed healthy, reports the British The Guardian.

His spokesperson Dmitry Peskov tried to hush up the issue in a radio interview with Ekho Moskvy, saying "there’s no need to worry, everything is fine."

Peskov claimed Putin is "constantly in meetings, but they are not all public," saying the issues he's dealing with are "very stressful," and going on to claim Putin's handshake is still strong enough to "break hands."

However, earlier this week Putin cancelled a trip to Kazakhstan to meet the president of the country and Belarus, with a source in the Kazakh government revealing to Reuters that the cancellation was due to Putin getting sick.

Likewise a meeting with officials of Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia on Wednesday was cancelled, and he didn't show up at an annual Federal Security Service meeting on Thursday that he normally attends.

Kremlin sources revealed to RBK that Putin also didn't meet the governor of the Yamal-Nenets region on Tuesday, disproving the presidential website's claim that the meeting happened.

Forbes magazine's Katya Soldak on Thursday analyzed the state of affairs, noting "some reports suggest cracks in Putin’s power vertical. Reuters reports that the killing of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and his alleged killers’ link to Chechnya point to a possible divide between the Russian state security agency (FSB) – Putin’s closest allies – and the head of Russia’s Chechnya region, Ramzan Kadyrov, who has a pretty powerful army that operates outside of FSB’s direct influence."

"The idea of a palace coup, or at least some serious problems within Putin’s power system, has been circulating in media for quite some time," she noted.