The Daily Mail reports that according to sources that have long claimed inside knowledge about Vladimir Putin’s health, his days are numbered and he has made a short list of possible successors.
Valery Solovey a former professor at Moscow’s prestigious Institute of International Relations [MGIMO]–an institution that trains spies and diplomats–speaking to the Ukrainian YouTube channel Odesa Film Studio, has said Putin’s health is rapidly worsening. “It is obvious that he has problems with movement – with legs – [which] many viewers have noticed” he said.
According to Solovey, Putin is under the care of non-Russian doctors who have also prescribed him a Western cancer therapy which has kept him alive and in power.
“I can say that without this [foreign] treatment he would definitely not have been in public life in the Russian Federation. He uses the most advanced treatments, [and] target therapy which Russia cannot provide him with.”
Despite the therapy which from Solovey’s point of view has worked relatively well, no medication can be forever a cure. The end is already in sight, even according to the doctors who are curating this treatment because no medication can be endlessly successful.
For this reason, Solovey believes that Putin is already making a shortlist of possible successors who will come to power after him. A likely candidate seems to be Russia’s current agriculture minister Dmitry Patrushev, who is also the son of a close ally of Putin, Nikolai Patrushev, a former head of the FSB, Russia’s secret service, and a key architect of the war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin has denied that the Russian leader suffers from any sort of illnesses. Putin has always promoted himself as a preternaturally strong man in body and mind and believes that his political power rests on affirming that image.
Earlier this month, he apparently fell down five steps at his home, landed on his tailbone and soiled himself. Even though his security team rushed to his side, the harsh fall caused him to “involuntarily defecate” according to reports, which the Kremlin later also denied.
