Galloping in the forests, hockey games, diving in frozen water for the Orthodox Epiphany: the display of physical prowess has always been a characteristic note of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, in sharp contrast to his predecessors in the Kremlin, from Stalin to Yeltsin. An image that began to creak with rumors of alleged mental illnesses and disorders circulated by Western intelligence at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. And now relaunched by a Russian newspaper specializing in investigative articles, Proekt, according to which the Russian president suffers from thyroid cancer. The Kremlin categorically denied the rumors.
However, Proekt, banned since last summer but still available in Russia through VPN systems, bases its statements on documents that show how Putin is constantly followed in his travels in the country, and in particular in moments of rest in Sochi, on the sea. Nero, by a large medical team. This would include an oncologist surgeon, Evgeni Selivanov, author, among other things, of a study on the diagnosis of thyroid cancer. In the past four years Selivanov would have traveled to Sochi to visit Putin 35 times. More assiduous than he turns out to be only an otolaryngologist, Alexei Shcheglov, who would have gone to meet the head of the Kremlin 59 times. Putin’s supposed health problems – who will turn 70 on 7 October next – have been evoked by American and European sources who have tried to explain the unexpected decision to attack Ukraine with an alleged instability perhaps due to the drugs he must take. . Some speak instead of difficulties in maintaining contact with reality, also citing the iron isolation to which he has subjected since the beginning of the Covid pandemic.
“President Putin is no longer the force he was, now he is a man in a cage, the cage he built himself,” said British Defense Minister Ben Wallace. While anonymous sources in the US military commands, cited by the New York Times, claim that Putin is disconnected from the reality of what is happening in Ukraine simply because this war is not followed by a single commander on the ground, and therefore there is no such quick and effective exchange of information between the troops on the ground and Moscow that would be needed. According to Proekt, however, rumors about the president’s health problems started circulating in Moscow medical circles as early as last fall, fueled by the almost maniacal attention paid by the presidential staff to keeping Putin physically isolated. Since beginning of his presidency when he was 47, news about the Kremlin head’s health was kept secret. The only admission came from the president himself last year, when he said he suffered from back problems from a fall from a horse. Precisely this problem, Proekt suggests, could be linked to an operation that Putin underwent at the end of November 2016, when as many as 12 doctors went to Sochi, including a group of neurosurgeons led by Oleg Myshkin and a rehabilitation specialist. In the past, the newspaper writes, Putin has expressed sympathy for alternative medicine. In particular, it seems that he also underwent water baths in which not yet ossified antlers were immersed in the Altai region. to which popular tradition attributes curative effects. And this despite the fact that there are several doctors in his family, including his eldest daughter Maria. It would have been only the emergence of a serious pathology, Proekt says, that would persuade the president to put his entire trust in medical specialists. According to the newspaper, there would be no less than nine who now follow him constantly.
