Everywhere and nowhere: A week in the life of Putin

All politics is local, as the saying goes, and that applies even to Russian President Vladimir Putin. That truth becomes evident from a close look at Putin's publicly available calendar, which offers fascinating insight into a leader who oversees virtually every aspect of Russian life.

Putin is often portrayed in the Western media as something of a cartoon villain. But he's also a skillful politician who has used the state-run media, a pliant bureaucracy and brutal repression to dominate Russian politics so totally that he appears to have no significant opposition. For many in the West, he's a figure of derision, even hatred. But at home, he retains a bedrock of popular support, even amid the Ukraine fiasco.

The calendar shows Putin filling his days with a surprisingly mundane string of meetings, videoconferences and ceremonies that demonstrate how he tries to bolster domestic confidence even as he wages a failing war in Ukraine. He is peripatetic, talking with aides about animal husbandry one day and artificial intelligence the next. He knows that he rules a vast nation, and although he's often seen as a Russian nationalist, he assiduously cultivates Russia's other, disparate ethnic groups. And although the Soviet Union is gone, he stays in regular touch with fractious leaders of former republics. His nostalgia for the Soviet era is palpable.

Putin operates in secret, but he also leaves a public trail.

1. Monday, Nov. 21: Turkeys and taxes

Putin pays almost obsessive attention to the small details of government. He begins the week with a videoconference on the state of Russia's livestock and poultry industry.

As the Russian leader is briefed on pig rearing, egg production and a half-dozen other details of what he calls “the agro-industrial complex,” it's obvious that more than 30 years after the end of communism, Russia is still in many ways a command economy. Putin wants to show he's boss - even of turkey breeding.

2. Tuesday, Nov. 22: Fidel and nuclear icebreakers

Putin takes an emperor's delight in ceremonial events, and the first one Tuesday celebrates two new nuclear-powered icebreakers, the Ural and the Yakutia. The ceremony takes place in St. Petersburg, but Putin participates by videoconference. Putin describes the two ships as “part of our large-scale, systematic work . . . to strengthen Russia's status as a great Arctic power.” He thanks the shipbuilders “from the bottom of my heart.” Putin later attends the unveiling of a new bronze statue in Moscow honoring Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a charismatic ally in the glory days of the Soviet Union. Dedicating the monument, Putin recalls Castro as “a true friend of our country” whose “power, energy and unbending will ... still attract like a magnet.”

3. Wednesday, Nov. 23: Fertilizer and a not-so-fraternal visit to Armenia

Putin's day begins with Dmitry Mazepin, chairman of the Commission for the Production and Marketing of Mineral Fertilizers.

Mazepin provides the boss with a blur of statistics about fertilizer production.

4. Thursday, Nov. 24: Artificial Intelligence, an `Order of Courage' and no `extraordinary measures'

Putin's big event Thursday is attending a long, detailed discussion of “Artificial Intelligence Technologies for Economic Growth.” Putin discusses AI with surprising intensity and verbosity. My printout of his remarks is 42 pages long. Putin asks interesting questions: What is the cognitive basis for intuition? How can data improve governance? What will AI mean for employment?

In reality, Russia lags badly behind the United States, Europe and China in AI research.

5. Friday, Nov. 25: Grieving mothers, Chechen allies and Russian gunsmiths

Two days before Mother's Day in Russia, Putin meets with a group of women said to be Russian mothers whose sons are fighting and dying in Ukraine. “We share this pain,” Putin tells them. “We understand that nothing can replace the loss of a son, a child.”

What's striking about this carefully selected gathering of mothers is how many of them are from Russia's ethnic minorities and distant regions. And here, Putin is canny. For these areas, not cosmopolitan Moscow or St. Petersburg, are supplying an inordinate share of the soldiers for the costly, unsuccessful campaign in Ukraine.

Putin meets next with his war cabinet, the permanent members of his security council. At no point during this week does Putin acknowledge, in any way, that his military is conducting a brutal campaign that has terrorized Ukrainian civilians and made the country itself, rather than its armed forces, its target. This was a week when Putin fired scores of missiles and drones at Ukraine's infrastructure, trying to freeze the nation into submission. Much of the world is outraged, but Putin appears oblivious.

He is an enigmatic leader, everywhere and nowhere. He talks falsely of Russia as the victim, rather than the aggressor. His confidence never appears to flag.