A new report citing leaked Kremlin emails claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin is battling both pancreatic cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
In messages obtained by The Sun, a Russian intelligence source seemed to confirm long-held rumours about the 70-year-old strongman.
The insider with the security services reportedly said, “I can confirm he has been diagnosed with early-stage Parkinson’s disease, but it’s already progressing.
According to the source, “This fact will be denied in every way possible and hidden.”
Putin, who was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, is routinely injected with various potent steroids and cutting-edge painkilling injections, the source claimed.
The source continued, “It not only causes a lot of pain, but Putin has a condition of puffiness of the face and other side effects, including memory lapses.”
The insider continued, “There are rumours that Putin has prostate cancer in addition to pancreatic cancer, which is slowly progressing.
Putin’s alleged ill health has been the subject of rumours for several months, with several unconfirmed reports claiming the president is battling cancer.
Putin likes to portray himself as strong, so the Kremlin has consistently denied that he has any illnesses.
Rumors about Vladimir Putin’s supposedly poor health have been circulating for months.
The bombshell report comes after Putin was recently captured on video with what appeared to be IV track marks on the back of his hand as he was grasping a soldier’s arm while visiting a boot camp in the Ryazan region.
Kyiv Post journalist Jason Jay Smart tweeted screenshots from the video, with the mystery blemish clearly visible on the Kremlin leader’s hand.
Smart wrote that the Kremlin released two versions of the video from Putin’s trip: one with numerous watermarks obscuring the view of the hand, and another without the image of the hand.
Another theory, put forth by former Ukraine correspondent Tom Warner, suggested that what looks to be an IV mark could be “just a weird angle of bulgey [sic] veins.”
A mystery mark is seen on Vladimir Putin’s right hand, circled in red, during his trip to a training ground in the Ryazan region of Russia.
Rumors about Putin’s supposedly poor health have been swirling for months, fueled in large part by unsubstantiated reports from the Telegram channel General SVR, which claimed that he suffers from cancer, Parkinson’s and a schizoaffective disorder.
The Russian independent outlet Proekt claimed that Putin is always accompanied by medical personnel, including top oncologists, whenever he goes on official visits.
In a rare comment about the president’s health, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov assured reporters that “everything is fine with his heath” after Putin postponed a trip to Kazakhstan in July.
Vladimir Putin grips a table in a recent meeting, leading to speculation about his health.
An expert has said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s body language “reinforces an unhealthy appearance.”
Kremlin
The West has interpreted recent statements by Putin and his allies that Russia could use nuclear weapons to defend its territorial integrity as implicit threats to use them to defend the four regions of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed.
Game theory specialist Georgy Egorov has warned that a bomb attack “makes sense” for Putin if he only has a few months to live, The Sun reported.
“It makes sense to use nuclear weapons for Putin in just one case – if the reports about his health problems are accurate — if he has a few months left to live — he does not want to go down in history as a loser,” Egorov told Novaya Gazeta.
Putin claimed that using nuclear weapons to attack Ukraine was unneeded at a gathering of world specialists on foreign affairs.