Vladimir Putin given ‘urgent medical help’ after mystery illness, claims Kremlin insider
Vladimir Putin has been given ‘urgent medical help’ after being struck down by a severe mystery illness, claims a Kremlin insider. WARNING: Graphic
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Vladimir Putin was given “urgent medical assistance” earlier this week after being struck down by a “sharp sickness”, according to Kremlin insiders.
Russia’s president has reportedly been ordered by his doctors not to make any “lengthy” public appearances.
According to The Sun, Putin is said to have fallen ill while talking to his military chiefs and suffered “sharp sickness, weakness and dizziness” as he got up from his desk after a 90-minute virtual session.
The claims appeared on the General SVR channel on the messaging app Telegram, which is purportedly run by a Kremlin insider.
It said that Putin “needed urgent medical assistance” from doctors.
The channel said this sudden “dizziness” spell was the real reason Vlad’s annual “Direct Line” live broadcast had been postponed with no plans for rescheduling.
‘FURIOUS’ RUSSIAN GENERALS COULD ‘REMOVE’ PUTIN: EXPERT
Vladimir Putin faces being killed in a coup as Russian generals are furious over his disastrous handling of the war in Ukraine.
According to The Sun, the ailing autocrat could be taken out by his own security services in a death that could be quietly covered up as simply a complication of his reportedly failing health - such as a heart attack.
The report hypothesises that Putin could be replaced by an even more hard line leader who could send troops back to Kyiv, according to leading security expert Dr Robert Thornton.
Dr Thornton, a professor in conflict and security studies at King’s College London, told The Sun that Russian military generals are losing patience with their leader and want him gone.
“The FSB [Russia’s security service] think that Putin needs to be removed because he’s gone soft on Ukraine,” he said.
“He’s pulled back from Kyiv. He’s only now concentrating on the Donbass.”
Dr Thornton said Russia’s military intelligence unit, the GRU, could be best placed to remove Putin and could move soon if they see troops lose ground in eastern Ukraine.
“They have the intelligence to do it,” he said.
“If you want to conduct a palace coup, you want to keep it very secret and very quiet.
“You’d get the GRU to do it and they’ve been given more and more power over the last few weeks.”
He said small band of senior security officers could approach Putin with an ultimatum to leave office or be killed.
“Then you get people on television to say that Putin has not been well and then you have a new leader,” the professor explained.
“You’d get someone to say: ‘Poor Mr Putin had a heart attack, from all the strain of his special military operation and we’ve put so-in-so in charge’.”
The expert said this wouldn’t be a stretch for Russians to believe because it happened with Leonid Brezhnev, a former Soviet leader, and other communist figureheads in the 1970s.
“They said ‘oh, they were ill’ but really they were dead’.”
It comes as Putin is under mounting pressure from his generals to dramatically turn around his disastrous military campaign in Ukraine.
Russia has now lost an estimated 30,000 soldiers, seen thousands of destroyed tanks and aircraft, and even lost their Black Sea flagship the Moskva.
Burnt-out carcasses of Russian tanks and armoured vehicles litter the Ukrainian countryside in what been dubbed “tank graveyards” - along with the corpses of thousands of Russian soldiers piling up.
More than 100 days into this conflict Russia has still not achieved its major military objectives.
Depleted and exhausted Russian forces were forced to withdraw from Kyiv in April.
They had also been losing ground in the Donbass with Kharkiv being the latest city to be “liberated” by Ukrainian troops.
Dr Thornton stated: “The army can’t go on haemorrhaging the number of people it is,” he said.
“It is being bled white. It’s running out of troops, it’s running out of missiles, it’s running out of everything.
“There is bound to be morale issues in the army and leadership issues and people asking why we are doing this.
“There’s bound to be a groundswell of junior officers and those at the lower echelons of the Russian army who are saying ‘what are we doing this for?’ and this might percolate upwards to the more senior ranks.”
In the event of a coup, Russian generals would surreptitiously withdraw their best units from the frontline and march them towards Moscow, the professor said.
But the defence academic warned a coup would lead to a worse outcome for Ukraine and the West.
“If you tell the military to perform a military coup, are they going to listen?
“And if we have a coup to replace Putin, he’s going to be replaced with someone more hardliner. Someone who is harder in the Ukraine war than Putin.
He theorised Putin could be replaced by either the General Valery Gerasimov, who heads Russia’s army, or ultranationalist Alexander Bortnikov, who leads the FSB.
“The Russians have been told they’re at war against the Nazis, so whoever takes over can’t suddenly say, ‘oh, we give up. We withdraw from Ukraine.’
“That would be like saying ‘oh, we’ve been defeated by the Nazis’ and no leader in Russia would be able to live with that.”
He added: “I do fear the use of tactical nuclear weapons to send a message from the Russian military that they’re serious about Ukraine, so you might see a small city hit by a nuclear missile.
“That could happen if the hardliners get in, or even if Putin stays, as they’ll want to send a message in line with Russian doctrine of Udar, which means massive shock in Russian. You would shock your enemy into surrender and you win.”
PUTIN TREATED FOR ‘ADVANCED CANCER’
It comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently received treatment for advance cancer, say three US intelligence leaders, who told Newsweek the information was included in a classified US report.
Produced at the end of May, the report is the fourth comprehensive assessment of Putin’s health, which the officials said was a subject of intense conversation inside the Biden administration.
According to Newsweek, the assessments also confirmed an assassination attempt on Putin’s life in March.
The high ranking officials told the publication they were concerned about Putin’s increasing paranoia about his hold on power.
But while Putin’s state of mind made for a “rocky and unpredictable course in Ukraine”, it also made the prospects of nuclear war less likely, they said.
“Putin’s grip is strong but no longer absolute,” one of the senior intelligence officers with direct access to the reports told Newsweek.
“The jockeying inside the Kremlin has never been more intense during his rule, everyone sensing that the end is near.”
Newsweek said all three officials—one from the office of the Director of National Intelligence, one a retired Air Force senior officer, and one from the Defence Intelligence Agency—cautioned that the Russian leader’s isolation made it more difficult for US intelligence to precisely assess Putin’s status and health.
“What we know is that there is an iceberg out there, albeit one covered in fog,” said the DNI leader.
RUSSIA’S ‘CRAZY’ HIT IN UKRAINE
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of “madness” after Russian troops hit a chemical plant in their bid to complete the capture of a key eastern city.
The battle for control of Severodonetsk has been intensifying this week, with heavy casualties on both sides, as EU leaders haggle over banning Russian gas to punish the Kremlin for its three-month-old invasion of its pro-Western neighbour.
One of the industrial hubs on Russia’s path to taking the eastern Lugansk region, Severodonetsk, has become a target of massive Russian firepower since the failed attempt to occupy Kyiv.
Russians now control most of the destroyed city, regional authorities said on Tuesday local time, adding that enemy forces had hit a nitric acid tank at a chemical plant and warning people to stay indoors.
“Given the presence of large-scale chemical production in Severodonetsk, the Russian army’s strikes there, including blind air bombing, are just crazy,” Mr Zelenskyy said in a video message.
“But on the 97th day of such a war, it is no longer surprising that for the Russian military, for Russian commanders, for Russian soldiers, any madness is absolutely acceptable.”
RUSSIAN SOLDIERS JAILED FOR WAR CRIMES
Two Russian soldiers have been jailed for war crimes by a Ukrainian court, the BBC is reporting.
Alexander Bobikin and Alexander Ivanov, who were part of a Russian military unit that shelled a Kharkiv school, pleaded guilty to the charges.
It marked the second time the Ukrainian courts had handed down a guilty verdict for war crimes since the Russian invasion started in February. The first saw Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin jailed for life for killing a civilian.
RUSSIA ACCUSES UKRAINE OF ‘TERROR ATTACK’
Two people were injured following an explosion in the Moscow-controlled city of Melitopol in southeastern Ukraine, local pro-Kremlin authorities said on Monday.
Russian troops took control of the city in the Zaporizhzhia region in the early days of Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine, but were met with fierce resistance.
“This morning there was a terrorist attack aimed at destabilising the peaceful life of the city,” Melitopol’s Russia-installed authorities said on Telegram.
According to the statement, a car packed with explosives blew up in the city centre, injuring two “humanitarian aid” volunteers, a 28-year-old woman and a 25-year-old man.
Clouds of black smoke were visible in the city on Monday morning. The blast shook the windows and walls of nearby buildings, Vladimir Rogov, a Russia-appointed official in Melitopol, said on Telegram.
In another sign that Moscow is looking to maintain a long-term presence in parts of Ukraine controlled by its troops, Russian investigators said they would be looking into the blast.
According to its information, the blast “organised by Ukrainian saboteurs” took place during the distribution of humanitarian aid near a residential building.
Three people were injured, two of whom are in hospital, the investigators said. Some reports suggested that the blast took place near the area where the Russia-installed head of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, lives.
It comes as video has emerged of a Russian soldier ‘flipping the bird’ at a Ukrainian drone before he is killed.
The footage shows the munition-dropping drone watching Russian soldiers gathered near a tank on the side of a building.
Wearing a helmet and armed with a rifle, one of Vladimir Putin’s troops looks directly up at the drone and gives the middle finger.
But the drone then reportedly drops a grenade on the tank destroying the vehicle and killing the invaders.
RUSSIA’S TERMINATOR TANKS
Previously, Russia’s Terminator tanks have been seen in combat in Ukraine for the first time.
Photos reveal tanks, thought to be Putin’s Terminators, on a field with main battle tanks surrounded by plumes of smoke, presumably from rounds of ammunition being fired.
The heavily armoured vehicles withdrew after coming under artillery fire from Ukraine, The Sun reports.
Earlier this month Moscow deployed its only unit of the Terminator tanks, about 10, to the frontline for the first time.
Residents had gone more than two weeks without a mobile phone connection, he added.
Governor Gaiday said the sole road link to the outside world was expected to be the focus of continued Russian attacks.
“Next week will be very hard, as Russia puts all its resources into seizing Severodonetsk, or cutting off the (area) from communication with Ukraine,” he said.
In their call with Putin, Scholz and Macron pointed to a looming global food security crisis.
In addition to capturing key ports such as Mariupol, Russia has used its warships to cut off other cities still in Ukrainian hands, blocking grain supplies from being transported out.
LOOMING FOOD, WEAPON CRISIS
Russia and Ukraine supply about 30 per cent of the wheat traded on global markets.
Russia has tightened its own exports and Ukraine has vast amounts stuck in storage, driving up prices and reducing availability across the globe.
Putin has repeatedly rejected any responsibility, instead blaming Western sanctions.
But on Saturday, he told Macron and Scholz that Russia was “ready” to look for ways to allow more wheat onto the global market.
“Russia is ready to help find options for the unhindered export of grain, including the export of Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea ports,” the Kremlin quoted him as saying.
He also called for the lifting of sanctions to allow “an increase in the supply of Russian fertilisers and agricultural products” to the global market.
Urgent calls by Zelensky for more advanced weaponry from Ukraine’s Western allies appear to paying off, with Washington agreeing to send advanced long-range rocket systems, according to US media reports.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby did not confirm the plans to deliver the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System, highly mobile equipment capable of firing up to 300 kilometres (186 miles) that Kyiv has said it badly needs.
But he said Washington was “still committed to helping them succeed on the battlefield”.
Putin warned Macron and Scholz that ramping up arms supplies to Ukraine would be “dangerous” and risk “further destabilisation”.
On Sunday, the Russian defence ministry said it had destroyed a Ukrainian armed forces arsenal in the southeastern city of Kryvyi Rih with “long-range high-precision missiles”.
Russian forces also targeted a Ukrainian anti-air defence system near Mykolaivka in the Donetsk region, as well as a radar station near Kharkiv and five munitions depots, one of which was close to Severodonetsk.
As Zelensky seeks to ramp up international pressure on Moscow, he will speak to EU leaders at an emergency summit Monday on an embargo on Russian oil.
Agreement is being held up by Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban has close relations with Putin.
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