Where is Russian President Vladimir Putin? – BBC News

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s whereabouts remain unknown following the short-lived rebellion from the Wagner mercenary group. 

There has been speculation that the Russian leader fled Moscow during the crisis after his presidential jets were tracked leaving the city. 

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the events show the cracks in Mr Putin's authority. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, has left Russia for Belarus after abandoning his advance on Moscow.

War in Ukraine: how far will Putin go?

Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine is devastating the country and its people. How far will he go? The Economist's experts discuss the threat of escalation, from the use of nuclear weapons to attacks beyond Ukraine.

Digital geopolitics - Russia is trying to build its own great firewall

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has portrayed his aggression toward Ukraine as pushing back against Western advances. For some time he has been doing much the same online. 

He has long referred to the internet as a “CIA project”. His deep belief that the enemy within and the enemy without are in effect one and the same means that if Alexei Navalny, Mr Putin’s foremost internal foe, uses YouTube—his video of the president’s seaside palace was viewed more than 120m times—then YouTube and its corporate parent, Google, are enemies, too.

Faced with such “aggression”, Mr Putin wants a Russian internet that is secure against external threat and internal opposition. He is trying to bring that about on a variety of fronts: through companies, the courts and technology itself.

Jointly with China, Russia has stalled UN talks aimed at defining responsible state behaviour in cyberspace, instead insisting on “information sovereignty”—code for doing what ever it pleases.

Read THE ECONOMIST's full analysis HERE.