A Ukrainian intelligence chief claims via a recent published new report that Vladimir Putin is afflicted with “several serious illnesses” including cancer, however, the Russian president will most likely continue to live “at least a few more years.”
Kyrylo Budanov, the Kyiv military spy chief, also stated that assassins targeted Putin but an attempt to take down the Russian president was thwarted.
“In an much-heralded interview with Ukrayinska Pravda, Budanov, 36, confirmed that the Ukrainians believe Putin is suffering from cancer, but did not add to an advance excerpt from the interview which revealed an apparent assassination bid on him,” stated a report from the Daily Mail.
“He has several serious illnesses, one of which is cancer,” he claimed. “But it is not worth hoping that Putin will die tomorrow. He has at least a few more years. Like it or not, but it’s true.”
Budanov went on to add that Putin has been seen many times recently sporting a highly “confused” mental state and seeming weaker.
“Here we can argue a lot about the state of the dictator, who thought he would capture the whole country [Ukraine] in three days and raise the Russian flag on the administration building in Kyiv,” stated the spy chief. “And for the third month in a row, declaring that he has the second and sometimes the first army in the world, he cannot cope, in his words, ‘with backward non-state Ukraine.'”
This is not the first time that the health of the Russian president has been the subject of discussion. Other reports claim that the 69-year-old former agent of the KGB is afflicted with cancer and is currently dealing with chemotherapy, while many others state that judging by the way he is behaving in public and at events, he may be suffering from something else such as dementia or even Parkinson’s.
Another popular train of thought, one that seems to have sparked from a former chief of MI6, went on to state that Putin would be out of power and end up stuck in a long-term care facility by as soon as early 2023, read a report from the New York Post.
“I’m really going to stick my neck out. I think he’ll be gone by 2023,” stated Sir Richard Dearlove, who previously ran Britain’s CIA-like agency, while on the “One Decision” podcast, where he currently is a co-host. “Probably into the sanatorium, from which he will not emerge as leader of Russia.”
The act of effectively Institutionalizing Putin could be just what Dearlove would mark as an “elegant” alternative to a bloody coup. If that were to happen, he claimed that the most likely person to take Putin’s place would be the secretary of the Security Council of Russia Nikolai Patrushev.
“If my thesis were fulfilled and Putin did disappear into a sanatorium, I think he’s the likely stand-in,” concluded Dearlove, who sat as the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 until 2004. “And of course the stand-in [in] this scenario probably becomes permanent. I mean, you know there is no succession in the Russian leadership. They certainly don’t succession-plan.”