It’s already a nightmare scenario: a madman is in control of the largest nuclear arsenal and one of the top militaries on the planet. But what if it was even worse. What if he has nothing to lose? Leaked Russian audio has posed the terrifying question: Is Vladimir Putin ill or even perhaps dying? An oligarch near the Kremlin was recorded on a tape stating the president is ‘very ill with blood cancer.’ Is this real, idle speculation or disinformation created to make a paranoid and unpredictable totalitarian susceptible?
The tabloid press, supported by an avalanche of Twitter diagnosticians, appears to think so. The 69-year-old Russian president’s decreasing health has actually been the subject of extreme speculation considering that his Feb. 24 illegal invasion of Ukraine started– speculation that Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has actually dismissed, pointing out Putin’s “excellent” health.
Boris Karpichkov, a KGB defector to the UK (and former officer of the Second Chief Directorate, focusing on counterintelligence), thinks his fellow sexagenarian ex-spy has Parkinson’s illness, along with “many” other disorders such as dementia.
Karpichkov informed Rupert Murdoch’s Sun paper, corresponding Putin to Stalin, who had at least one stroke:
“He is — or at least acts — mad and obsessed with paranoia concepts.”
Putin is set to go through surgical treatment for an undefined kind of cancer in the future, according to a Telegram channel supposedly run by a previous officer from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, and his momentary replacement will be the grim Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, a fellow ex-KGB male and long time director of among the firm’s follower firms.
Patrushev is likewise among the program’s most hardline ideologues, as New Lines has actually shown.
Putin himself is the proof of the prevalence of different, if not inconsistent, claims of Putin’s approaching death. He certainly has a dreadful look. On telecasted occasions, Putin’s bullfrog mien, uncomfortable gait, and fidgety habits were on screen, including his April 22 conference with his embattled defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, throughout which a dropped Putin holds on to the edge of a parodically small table as if to consistent himself versus a trembling or vertigo.
There’s likewise his popular self-isolation throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, which is in some cases pointed out as the cause for his convening with foreign visitors at middle ages banquet-length tables both prior to and after the war. (According to Russian independent media, everybody who wishes to be close to Putin needs to go through a PCR test and even use a fecal sample.).
Putin is understood to have actually sustained numerous injuries to his back because he initially ended up being president of Russia in 2000. He fell off a horse throughout his very first term, a mishap that crippled him for a time, according to a source pointed out by Proyekt. He can likewise be seen hopping in more current videos, an obvious function of his public looks such that the Kremlin press service at one point prohibited state news agencies from describing it.
He likewise took a nasty spill at an ice hockey match in Sochi in May 2017 after another gamer knocked him. On that occasion, Sim, the orthopedic traumatologist, stayed near Putin’s home for 8 days.
“In at least two cases,” Proyekt reported, “Putin underwent either an operation or a very serious procedure, most likely in the back.”
Starting in 2012, the Russian president’s ailing health was likewise blamed for his prolonged disappearance from the spotlight. Those lacks have actually led to the spread of “canned food,” or taped videos of his seemingly real-time interactions with visitors, as called by the Russians. Putin’s conference with his nationwide security leaders, which was relayed on Feb. 21 soon prior to the start of his newest war with Ukraine, was shot previously, based on the dates shown on the participants’ watches.
On March 18, at a big pro-war rally in Moscow, Putin was provided an address recorded strolling off stage down a brief flight of stairs putting the majority of his weight on his left foot.
Just this previous week, at Russia’s Victory Day event in Red Square, to honor the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, Putin sat with an FDR-Esque blanket curtained over his lap. (The temperature level in Moscow on Victory Day– May 9– was a non-Arctic 48 degrees Fahrenheit.) His walk throughout the Victory Day parade was noticeably uncomfortable, perhaps to hide a limp that has actually in other places been observed. And his face was even puffier than normal.
