MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Friday (Saturday in Manila) insisted that President Vladimir Putin was in a good physical shape and able to work normally, after reports that he had put off a visit by the Japanese premier raised new concerns about his health.

Sources in Tokyo said that the Kremlin cancelled upcoming talks with the Japanese prime minister due to Putin’s health, which has been the subject of repeated speculation since he was spotted limping in September.

“I ask you not to be concerned. Not to worry. Everything is fine with his health,” said Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov, quoted by Russian news agencies. “He had a minor sports injury. No one is immune from sports injuries.”

State television showed Putin later in the day holding a working meeting at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow with leaders of parliamentary parties.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the visit of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to Moscow was “never scheduled definitively” and expressed hope it would occur in January.

A Japanese government source told Agence France-Presse on Friday that Russian officials informed the Japanese side of the cancellation of the meeting due to Putin’s unspecified health problem.

Japanese media also said that a mayor of a northern Japanese town quoted Prime Minister Noda as saying “President Putin’s health condition is bad.”

Putin’s foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov said that no final date for the visit had ever been agreed and that it was “unethical” of the Japanese side to have raised the question of dates publicly.

Peskov also gave an interview to mass-circulation newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, calling the rumors of Putin’s health problems “blown out of proportion.”

The globe-trotting Russian strongman, 60, has traveled actively ever since embarking on his historic third term in the Kremlin in May, but he has not ventured outside the country since an official visit to Tajikistan on October 5.

He has also held working meetings increasingly at his out-of-town Novo-Ogaryovo residence rather than the Kremlin, although aides said that this is to minimize the traffic disruption caused when his security convoy comes to Moscow.

Putin’s aides have already confirmed that he was suffering from a sports injury when he hosted the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vladivostok in September.

Explanations for the problem have ranged from a bad fall during a bout of his favorite sport judo or aggravating an old problem during his much-ridiculed hang-glider flight in September.