MOSCOW—Having waited until the Russian leader was lying facedown on the massage table before quietly slipping into the room behind him, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is said to have posed as a masseuse at a high-end Moscow spa Monday in order to spend a few minutes alone with Vladimir Putin. “You seem very tense, Mr. Putin—how have things been going lately?” the United States cabinet member reportedly said while kneading Putin’s shoulders as gentle panpipe music played around them. “You sure have a lot of knots in your back. Have you been hunching over lately while drawing up plans for an imminent large-scale invasion of Ukraine, or maybe tensing up at the thought of crippling Western economic sanctions? You’d probably feel a lot more relaxed if you just invalidated yesterday’s referendum results in Crimea and acknowledged publicly that such a vote was illegal under the Ukrainian constitution.” Sources confirmed that Putin turned around with suspicion following Kerry’s suggestion that the Russian president could ease his muscle stiffness by withdrawing troops from Ukraine, at which point the secretary of state hastily poured water onto some nearby heated sauna stones to create a veil of steam, claimed to need more massage oil, and dashed out of the room.