Putin’s bizarre poop suitcase’: Which other global leaders adopt secretive security tactic?

New Delhi: Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting for two days (December 4 and 5). His arrival here marks the occasion of the 23rd India-Russia Annual Summit in New Delhi. Among some of the things belonging to Putin, his widely-known "poop suitcase” has once again hit the headlines.

Putin's waste is reportedly, sealed and flown back to Russia during his visits abroad. His bodyguards are believed to have carried his ‘poop suitcases’ to the Alaska Summit in the US. It is done during his foreign trips, reportedly during his 2017 visit to France and his 2019 Saudi Arabia trip. Journalists Regis Gente and Mikhail Rubin, in the French magazine Paris Match, first produced a detailed report on the suitcase.

As bizarre as it may sound, there are other global leaders who, like Putin, carries personal toilets and collect their waste during foreign trips. In September, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reportedly carried his own toilet to China while on a visit to attend the military parade. Intelligence agencies in South Korea and Japan have claimed that Kim travelled on a bulletproof train to reach Beijing that had a private lavatory. Kim reportedly does not want to leave behind any waste from which people can extract DNA and gain insight into his physical health.

Kim reportedly did something like that during his visit to South Korea to attend a North-South summit in 2018. In 1949, when Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s visited Moscow, Soviet chief Joseph Stalin reportedly installed special toilets for the former to collect his waste and know about his health. In 1999, Israeli and Jordanian operatives reportedly collected samples of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad's waste when he visited Amman for the funeral of Jordan’s King Hussein.