Russian President Vladimir Putin is battling both pancreatic cancer and Parkinson’s disease, according to a new report citing leaked Kremlin emails.
A Russian intelligence source appeared to confirm in messages viewed by The Sun what has long been rumored about the 70-year-old strongman.
“I can confirm he has been diagnosed with early stage Parkinson’s disease, but it’s already progressing,” the security services insider reportedly claimed.
“This fact will be denied in every possible way and hidden,” the source said, according to The Sun.
“Putin is regularly stuffed with all kinds of heavy steroids and innovative painkilling injections to stop the spread of pancreatic cancer he was recently diagnosed with,” the person said.
“It not only causes a lot of pain, Putin has a state of puffiness of the face and other side effects — including memory lapses,” the source continued.
“In his close circle, there are rumors that in addition to pancreatic cancer, which is gradually spreading, Putin also has prostate cancer,” the insider added.
Rumors about Putin’s supposedly poor health have been circulating for months, with several unconfirmed reports saying the president is battling cancer.
The Kremlin has always denied that Putin, who likes to project an image of strength, suffers from any illnesses.
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.
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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.”
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.
After Putin canceled a trip to Kazakhstan in July, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov made a rare statement about the leader’s physical state, telling reporters that “everything is fine with his heath.”
Putin and his cronies have repeatedly said recently that Russia could use nuclear weapons weapons to protect its territorial integrity — — remarks interpreted in the West 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 nuke 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 only one situation – if the rumors about his health problems are true — 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 said at a conference of international foreign policy experts that it was unnecessary for Russia to strike Ukraine with atomic weapons.