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Russian President Vladimir Putin may have used his long speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last Friday to allay widespread speculation about his health.
The 69-year-old Putin’s health has raised questions, especially since several videos of the Russian leader in recent months have inspired a barrage of rumours. Some of these claims even predate the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war, but the speculation intensified once the Russian leader invaded.
Keir Giles, a senior fellow at the Russia and Eurasia program at the Chatham House international affairs think tank, told the British newspaper ‘The Mirror’ that Putin would have been seeking to “minimize rumors about his health” with his speech on Friday.
“A 72-minute endurance test speech, while not comparable to his previous marathon press conferences, is impressive to those who said he was on the brink of death,” Giles said.
Putin did not address rumors about his health in the speech, but did state that he was late giving it up for an alleged Ukrainian cyber attack, that Russia has hypersonic missiles that no one else in the world has, and that sanctions were a double-edged sword and only would harm the West. Giles continued: “Threats like this sometimes provoke a reaction in Western countries, but anyone who has been listening to President Putin more over the last three months knows that this is standard.”
Three senior US officials who read a classified US intelligence report compiled in late May told ‘Newsweek’ that the document indicated that Putin appeared to have resurfaced after being treated in April for advanced cancer. A former MI6 officer, who ran the agency’s Russia office for years, told Sky News in May that Putin was “pretty sick”, citing sources in Russia.
After Putin delayed his annual phone-call marathon for the first time in 18 years, a Swedish economist who previously worked as an economic adviser to the Russian government suggested the move indicated his failing health. “Every year Putin has a direct line to the Russian population in June, but not this year,” Anders Åslund tweeted on June 8. “This is another sign that his health is not good, because these events that last 3-4 hours are quite demanding even if it is written.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied late last month that Putin was suffering from a serious illness. “I don’t think people in their right mind can see in this person signs of any kind of illness or disease,” Lavrov said during an interview with French network TF1. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, also told the Associated Press in March that the Russian president’s health was “really perfect.”
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism