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Putin might have postponed Turkey visit due to injury
Putin was scheduled to visit Turkey on Oct. 14-15, but the visit was postponed, sparking guesswork in Turkey that the decision was linked to disagreements between Ankara and Moscow over Syria. Just a day after the news of postponement, Turkish F-16 jet fighters forced a Syrian plane that had departed from Moscow to land in Ankara on suspicion that it was carrying ammunition to Syria, angering the Russian government.
But now that Putin has rarely left his official residence as of late and postponed trips not only to Turkey but also to India and Bulgaria, it appears that an injury, not the row over Syria, might be behind the change in the Russian president's plans to visit Turkey, even though Putin's spokesman denies it.
On Thursday, the respected newspaper Vedomosti cited unnamed Kremlin-connected sources saying Putin's September flight in a motorized hang glider accompany migrating cranes had aggravated an old injury.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, told the state news agency RIA Novosti that Putin had an old injury, but it was not connected to the highly publicized flight. Peskov was quoted as saying Putin was making only infrequent trips to the Kremlin because he didn't want his motorcade to disrupt Moscow's notoriously bad traffic.
The presidential motorcade forces the shutdown of large stretches of highway, an inconvenience that many irritated drivers mark by blaring their horns angrily as the president's car races past.
As to the foreign trips that have been put off, Peskov said there was no single reason behind those changes.
The hang gliding flight with the cranes, which took place in September in Vladivostok, was one of Putin's trademark adventurous media events. The 60-year-old Russian leader has assiduously cultivated an image of vigor and daring, including being shown swimming in a Siberian river and petting a tranquilized polar bear in the Arctic. Putin also is a skier and a judo aficionado.
"Indeed he pulled a muscle. It happened before Vladivostok. He was suffering from some muscle pain then," Peskov said, according to Interfax.
Turkey and Russia have close political and business ties but are at odds over Syria. Russia remains an ally of the President Bashar al-Assad regime and has blocked attempts at the UN Security Council to condemn his regime for the bloodshed in Syria. Turkey, on the other hand, is perhaps the staunchest critic of Assad and supports the opposition that seeks to topple him. But both countries have carefully tried to keep the disagreement from affecting their bilateral ties. Ankara has repeatedly condemned inaction by the UN Security Council but has avoided directly confronting Russia over the Syria dispute.
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