“What amazed us was that all comments were written in Cyrillic,” said Claus Wiese, the editor responsible for the clips at NRK. “The clip launched a serious discussion.”
Arild Ørnholt, one of the video’s creators, along with Marius Stene and Jan-Petter Aarskog, said they had wanted to create “the ultimate Putin sketch”.
“It did not take long before strange theories appeared about where he had gone, so we thought we’d give people what they wanted,” he said.
Putin’s last public appearance before he temporarily disappeared was on March 5. He was then not seen in public for 10 days, sparking a flurry of media interest and speculation about his whereabouts. Possible theories involved a coup at the Kremlin and an internal power struggle, Putin undergoing plastic surgery, that he had flown to be at the side of a girlfriend as she gave birth in Switzerland, and even that he’d died.
When Putin finally reappeared last week, on Monday March 16, he dismissed the rumours and questions about his absence, simply noting that “life would be boring without gossip.” No official explanation for his absence was ever given, although the Russian independent news channel TV Rain said the Russian leader, 62, had suffered a bad case of flu and retreated to his secluded lakeside residence in Valdai.
The video’s light humour is in stark contrast to another video which went viral earlier this month, made by a Russian video blogger in Siberia. The aggressive video, called I, Russian Occupier, defends pro-Russian imperialism throughout history, and sends a warning message to other countries to stop criticising Russia. The video attracted millions of views and was even retweeted by Russia’s deputy prime minister. | 
