The president wakes late and eats shortly after noon. He begins with the simplest of breakfasts. There is always cottage cheese. His cooked portion is always substantial: omelette or occasionally porridge. He likes quails’ eggs. He drinks fruit juice. The food is for ever fresh: baskets of his favourites dispatched regularly from the farmland estates of the Patriarch Kirill, Russia’s religious leader.
He is then served coffee. His courtiers have been summoned but these first two hours are taken up with swimming. The president enjoys this solitary time in the water. He wears goggles and throws himself into a vigorous front crawl. This is where the political assistants suggest he gets much of Russia’s thinking done.
The courtiers joke and idle and cross their legs