Peter Rhodes on diplomacy, secrecy and the long, long saga of Putin's alleged ill-health

But we heard much the same rumours, again from “unnamed sources,” in 2016 and before that in 2014. Back then, the word was that he had pancreatic cancer and was not long for this world. As one 2014 report put it, some were claiming that “Putin has three years to live and wants to leave a legacy of expanding the Russian borders just like Peter the Great or Stalin.”

For a dying man, Putin seems remarkably durable. Then what of his alleged mental state, the paranoia about infection, or physical attack, that makes him sit at one end of a 30ft long table while his cronies or visiting politicians sit at the other end?

As you may have noticed, Putin puts a lot of space between himself and lumpy old politicians. But when he recently posed for photos with the slim and glamorous air hostesses of Aeroflot, he was quite happy to be close to them.

Putin's health is one of the best-kept secrets of this war. Remember when we used to have secrets? Not so long ago, the shipping of 4,000 anti-tank rockets from Britain to Ukraine would have been the ultimate sneaky-beaky operation. Not a whisper would have leaked out and, if the Russians did suspect anything, we could shuffle the contract through an impenetrable web of shell companies and offshore accounts. Total secrecy, total deniability.

Instead, those rockets were sent in a blaze of publicity followed by a rash of boy-toy headlines on the lines of “Brit rockets zap Putin's tanks.” The dead-eyed dictator in the Kremlin could not ignore that sort of goading. And that may explain the weekend attack on the military base close to Poland which looks suspiciously like a distribution hub for Western weapons on their way to the defenders of Kyiv.

Meanwhile, with Russian oil vetoed, Boris Johnson is schmoozing Saudi Arabia for a new source of supply. Embarrassingly, the Saudis have just executed 81 people in a single day. Boris's visit? It's called diplomacy while holding your nose.