Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kyrgyz counterpart Almazbek Atambayev shake hands during a meeting at the Constantine Palace in St Petersburg yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin reappeared yesterday after 10 unexplained days out of public view, laughing off the “gossip” over his health that had erupted during his absence.

The 62-year-old leader met the President of Kyrgyzstan at a lavish Tsarist-era palace outside St Petersburg in his first appearance since March 5. His absence had fuelled rumours he was ill.

“It would be boring without gossip,” Putin said, smiling easily before television cameras. He looked relaxed, if pale.

In a choreographed double-act, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev vouched for the Russian leader’s health, saying that Putin “just now drove me around the grounds; he himself sat at the wheel.”

The Russian leader prides himself on his macho image. Typically, he is shown most days on state-controlled television, meeting officials in Moscow or travelling to Russia’s far-flung regions.

During his absence, the Kremlin unexpectedly cancelled a trip to Kazakhstan and a high profile meeting with officers of the main successor agency to the KGB. Pictures were posted on the Kremlin website of meetings Putin had with public figures, which, it later emerged, had been taken several days earlier.

The Russian President looked relaxed, if pale

The absence began a week after an Opposition leader was shot dead near the Kremlin walls, adding to an ominous atmosphere in a country suffering from an economic crisis worsened by international sanctions imposed over Putin’s decision to intervene in neighbouring Ukraine.

Putin remains hugely popular in Russia, which has experienced a surge of nationalist and anti-American sentiment fuelled by state-run media since Putin sent troops to seize Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula a year ago.

Russia is celebrating the anniversary of its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, carried out with the help of special forces in the weeks after a pro-Moscow leader was toppled in Kiev.

Since then, a swathe of eastern Ukraine that Putin calls “New Russia” has also tried to secede, leading to war in which 6,000 people have been killed.

Nato insists that thousands of Russian troops are fighting there on behalf of pro-Russian rebels; something which Moscow denies.

Russia has repeatedly staged high-profile war games at pivotal moments during the Ukraine conflict.

Despite the economic crisis brought on by low prices for its energy exports as well as Western sanctions, Putin has promised to spend more than 21 trillion roubles ($335 billion) to revamp the military by the end of the decade.