His silence during this time had fueled all sorts of speculation, with some people believing he’d been in Switzerland to attend his girlfriend giving birth, while others thought he was ill, had power seized from him or that he might even have been assassinated.

Well, he appeared hale and hearty on Monday morning, and it turns out that Putin, utilizing the survivalist training he learned as a KGB operative, had spent the last week camping on his own. These are his private journals from that trip:

Day 1:

As spring approaches, the burning comes hard and fast.

I shudder with the unnatural urges and I know that I must, once again, remove myself to the Bialowieza Forest and make peace with the natural world.

My mind, as if fevered, returns again and again to that Sikh cab driver as he stared out his car window on Shkolnaya.

For a moment, our eyes, like magnets, found one another, and we were two beautiful, masculine animals locked to one another, our breathing becoming so urgent and alive, and in such perfect and furious unison as to be inseparable. We would to be just one, all flesh, muscle and luxuriant and mysterious beard. Ah, but this moment lived only in our hearts and minds, for we never met or spoke, just two rugged ships passing in the fading light of a tired Moscow day.

In the Bialowieza Forest there are no seductive cab drivers with strong, Indian features. No, here there are berries. Here there are cold streams in which to cleanse impurities from one’s naked body! Here there are animals to kill! Here there are so many places to unleash the rage and to let the echoes of pain take flight!!!

Day 2.

I am heterosexual.

I am heterosexual.

I am heterosexual.

I am Dear Shirtless Leader.

I am a powerful, heterosexual leader.

I am ruthless and without pity.

I am heterosexual.

Day 4

I use rocks to pound my hands. The pain reminds me of how much I love women and not men. Rocks are my friends. I will incite my people to throw them at the homosexuals when I return from my purification!

Day 5.

I spent the day in penetrating, decontaminating meditation.

The cold of the March forest felt good on my naked body. It was like being caressed and then handled roughly by the indifferent hands of an anonymous man looking to satisfy his own primal needs. I was an empty and willing vessel, a village waiting for to be led by its mayor.

I then ate two birds that I knocked out of the air using my belt. They are part of Father Russia now.

Day 6.

Today a young stag approached my camp while I made weapons from the beaks and talons of the birds I ate. This buck looked at me with both certainty and curiosity, and as a confident as a bear, walked right up to me and licked my bare chest.

I could have torn him apart with my horrible weapons, but I did not. He continued to lick– he must have been starved for nutrients and minerals—and I took his beautiful head in my powerful hands– and then he began to lick me in an intimate spot. The forest was a beautiful canopy above us and the sunlight was falling like gold coins all around, and for a moment there were no other living creatures in all of the universe, and then I twisted his neck and killed him, and there was but one living creature left, and it was then that I knew I had won and was ready to return to society.

When one of them reached up to the overhead compartment she modestly held her top down so as not to expose any flesh above her waist. She looked so very young, almost like a doll. She passed the time by watching videos, her face a shifting map of unfiltered responses, each one blossoming and becoming a kind of sunlight that illuminated her face.

The other one had short hair and the fleshy round face of a Buddha. She asked her friend to put some drops in her eyes, and one of them missed the mark, forming a tear just below her eye where it stayed unattended, as if a moment of sorrow now suspended in time. She was perfectly impassive, and as she sat there staring out the window her eyes grew heavier and heavier. Dazed and almost given to sleep, she seemed in a dimensional fog, just flickering in the limbo of this world, and capable at any moment of becoming more spirit than person and simply floating away.

I was listening to Sigur Ros on my headphones and it all felt like a movie, everything holy and beautiful, as if present only for my attention. Outside, as snow fell, farmlands, retreating forests and tiny homes sped past, more like memories than the architecture of the world. It felt profound, somehow, and then out of the camouflage and dull wash of scrub, a deer stepped from invisibility, so suddenly and magnificently manifest that it could only have been an angel.

michaelmurrayca: We’re finally leaving the cold, dark ice cave of Toronto!

michaelmurrayca: First, passing through the Rosedale Valley of Death. The forest is looming bent and horrible over road, like tree in Poltergeist.

michaelmurrayca: Oh. All of Toronto also fleeing apocalypse city.

michaelmurrayca: Avoid highway unless you find tranquility in stillness. Move through car wash at much greater velocity.

michaelmurrayca: Red tail lights in front of us stretching from here to Mordor. # LikeDeathLava

michaelmurrayca: Time of winter day when everything is the same colour– even salt-wretched cars in traffic jam.

michaelmurrayca: Now moving like pre-twilight wolves through landscape! Oh. Never mind. Traffic jam again. #BoxingDayBestDayOfYear

michaelmurrayca: Empty, Dark Onroutes, like post-apocalyptic tumble weeds, litter the side of highway like reminder of life we once knew.

michaelmurrayca: Very hungry. #Hangry

michaelmurrayca: Port Hope Pizza Pizza is a crime scene. 40 customers, 1 employee. #ThereWillBeBlood

michaelmurrayca: Now full of McDonald Happy Meal. You know how I feel.

michaelmurrayca: Now trapped in an actual parking lot. Feel like punching things.

michaelmurrayca: Now moving as fast as flying dolphins! Our lives redeemed!

michaelmurrayca: Flying dolphins tricked into traffic jam cove! Hate tricks!

michaelmurrayca: 3 hours 46 minutes to not yet Belleville.

michaelmurrayca: My wife doesn’t so much like me playing Nick Cave in a traffic crisis.# BadTasteWife!

michaelmurrayca: Can’t believe wife doesn’t like listening to Sting! # WhoIsThisWoman?

michaelmurrayca: Now playing girl music. #MarriageTipsForTrafficJam

michaelmurrayca: Retract usage of “girl music,” meant “good music.” Very lucky to have wife like Rachelle!#MarriageProTip

michaelmurrayca: Apparently I “yell” when I speak on the phone, and ” should have gotten your (my) fucking driver’s license decades ago.”# whatever

michaelmurrayca: Stony silence for an hour and a half good for both our morale.

michaelmurrayca: Now listening to Christian motivational CD. God wants us to succeed.

michaelmurrayca: Let Jesus be your co-pilot, says voice on CD. No idea how to apply that to a traffic jam.# UselessChristianTips

michaelmurrayca: If I was King of Kings, would create traffic removal trucks instead of just snow removal trucks. #UsefulThingsGodCouldDo

michaelmurrayca: Also, if King of Kings would move Toronto and Ottawa closer together. 3 hour trip regardless of transportation method. #SoSayethTheLord

michaelmurrayca: Just didn’t expect to hit a deer while in a traffic jam. Very demoralizing, especially since deer Rachelle’s spirit guide.

michaelmurrayca:  Pretty sure Christmas now very, very ruined.

michaelmurrayca: Very dark stretch of the road, like Cormac McCarthy novel only without spears and fancy language.

michaelmurrayca: Traffic loosening up after Kingston, but now icy and douche trucks everywhere!!

michaelmurrayca: We both tried to love you and the world the best we could!