Cancer surgeon ‘made 35 visits to Putin in four years’
With Russia’s president nearing 70, he is attended by a brigade of doctors including an oncology specialist in thyroid cancer.
Russian president Vladimir Putin was visited by a cancer surgeon 35 times in four years at his Black Sea residence, an investigation has claimed.
As Putin approaches his 70th birthday, he is attended by a brigade of doctors including Yevgeny Selivanov, an oncology surgeon who specialises in thyroid cancer, according to Proyekt, a Russian investigative journalism group.
Over a four-year period, Selivanov allegedly visited the Russian leader for a total of 166 days while Putin was in Sochi. Putin, a black belt judoka who enjoys adventure holidays in Siberia’s boreal forest, is also said to have turned to alternative medicine, indulging in a practice of bathing in blood extracted from severed deer antlers.
Proyekt uncovered details of Putin’s alleged medical treatment by examining publicly accessible government procurement documents. These show which doctors from the presidential clinic in Moscow were accommodated in four different hotels used by Kremlin staff near to Putin’s Bocharov Ruchey residence between 2016 and 2020, when the leader was either officially visiting the city or during periods when he controversially disappeared from public view.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied reports of Putin’s ill health, and his personal life is shrouded in secrecy.
Proyekt found that a team of doctors always arrived in the city just before the president, and occasionally their number “dramatically increased”. In two cases, in 2016 and 2019, there was a strong suggestion that Putin had undergone an operation or a serious procedure, most likely on his back, the group said. The first was at a time when the leader was not seen in public for five days.
This followed persistent rumours that Putin had a horseriding accident that gave him a limp.
By 2019, an average of nine doctors were accompanying Putin on his visits to Sochi, the documents suggest. Over the four-year period, three doctors were regularly on the team – two ear, nose and throat specialists and Selivanov.
The doctor who spent most time in Sochi during Putin’s visits was Alexei Shcheglov, one of the ear, nose and throat specialists, who made 59 visits between 2016 and 2019, for a total of 282 days. The other members of the medical team included anaesthetists, a neurosurgeon, an infectious diseases specialist and an intensive care doctor.
Proyekt cited an unnamed “acquaintance of the head of state” as saying that the president had indulged in the “antlers blood bath” on an unspecified visit to the Altai region, despite being told that it had no proven effect.
In the ritual, the antlers of deers are cut off to acquire blood, which is thought to give strength and halt the ageing process when bathed in or ingested.
The Kremlin has not commented on Proyekt’s report, but Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said in 2020 that the president’s health was “excellent”.
When Putin came to power as a 47-year-old in 2000, an essential component of his image was that of a virile, healthy man who liked sports and didn’t drink or smoke. That was a marked contrast with his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, who had a drinking problem and had undergone heart surgery.
On a visit to the United States in 1995, secret service agents had found an intoxicated Yeltsin in his underwear outside the White House, trying to hail a cab so he could go and buy a pizza.
Putin, by contrast, appeared sober and active, wrestling opponents to the floor on the judo mat and taking the controls of a fighter jet.
The Kremlin continued to push that image as Putin aged, and his photo shoots in recent years have shown him fishing, riding topless and carrying a rifle during trips to the Taiga with Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister.
However, there have been hints at illness or medical procedures. In 2010, he appeared to have bruised cheekbones during a visit to Ukraine, prompting media speculation about plastic surgery. The Kremlin said he was simply tired and the light had been “falling badly” on Putin’s face.
Government sources told reporters in 2012 that Putin, then 60, had a back problem which might require surgery, and was obliged to wear a corset. The Kremlin denied that and said an earlier limp was caused by an unspecified “sports injury”.
Last year, Putin described how he had once flown out of a horse’s saddle when it refused a jump, “and done a real somersault”. He did not say when the incident took place. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Putin stayed in strict isolation for months and kept visitors, including several foreign leaders, at the end of a very long table.
The Times
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