Kremlin says Putin not to attend FSB meeting

Rumors about the recent disappearance of Russian President Vladimir Putin from the public are getting thicker when the Kremlin announced Thursday that he would skip the regular meeting of the Federal Security Service (FSB)'s board.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin, who routinely chairs these meetings, would not attend the event scheduled for Thursday.

Peskov has made several statements denying insistent media allegations about the president's illness after news broke on Wednesday that a planned summit among leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus in Astana was postponed for unknown reasons.

Putin has not appeared in public since March 5, but the Kremlin website publishes brief updates of his activities on a daily basis, with the latest one saying that the president had a telephone conversation with his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sargsyan, on Thursday morning. Enditem