There is a recording of an oligarch close to the Russian gov saying Vladimir Putin is "very ill w/

[Yorkie Mom]

Link to tweet

.@michaeldweiss obtained a recording of an oligarch close to the Russian government saying Vladimir Putin is “very ill with blood cancer.” Is this the truth, a rumor or clever disinformation intended to make a paranoid dictator look ripe for removal?

Is Putin Sick – Or Are We Meant to Think He Is?

An oligarch close to the Kremlin was recorded on a tape saying the president is ‘very ill with blood cancer.’ Is this true, idle speculation or disinformation designed to make an erratic and paranoid dictator vulnerable?

Is Vladimir Putin sick or even dying?

The tabloid press, bolstered by a sudden efflorescence of Twitter diagnosticians, certainly seems to think so. Since his Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine got underway, the 69-year-old Russian president’s deteriorating health has been a subject of frenzied speculation — speculation that press secretary Dmitry Peskov has downplayed, citing Putin’s “excellent” health.

Boris Karpichkov, a KGB defector to Britain (and formerly an officer of the Second Chief Directorate, specializing in counterintelligence) thinks his fellow sexagenarian ex-spy suffers from Parkinson’s disease, along with “numerous” other maladies including dementia. “He is — or at least acts — insane and obsessed by paranoia ideas,” Karpichkov told Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper, comparing Putin in this respect to Stalin, who was the victim of at least one stroke.

A Telegram channel called “General SVR” and purportedly helmed by a former officer from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service has stated that Putin is set to undergo surgery for an unspecified form of cancer in the near future and that while he’s on the operating table, his temporary replacement will be the grim Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, a fellow ex-KGB man and longtime director of one of its successor agencies. Patrushev, as New Lines has documented, is also one of the most hawkish ideologues of the regime.

The evidence for the preponderance of disparate if not contradictory claims of Putin’s imminent demise is Putin himself. He certainly looks bad. The bullfrog mien, awkward gait, fidgety behavior at televised events including his April 22 meeting with his embattled defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, at which a slumped Putin clung to the edge of a parodically tiny table as if to steady himself against a tremor or vertigo. There is also his notorious self-isolation amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the oft-cited reason for his conducting meetings with foreign visitors, both before and during the war, at medieval banquet-length tables. (Anyone who wants to get close to Putin, Russian independent media have reported, must take a PCR test and even provide a fecal sample.)

More: https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/is-putin-sick-or-are-we-meant-to-think-he-is/

[bucolic_frolic]

1. He doesn't look well.

And his death would really juice stock markets.

[Tickle]

2. if he dies will the war end?

Please say yes,

[RKP5637]

3. ... could get worse ...

"...his temporary replacement will be the grim Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, a fellow ex-KGB man and longtime director of one of its successor agencies. Patrushev, as New Lines has documented, is also one of the most hawkish ideologues of the regime."

[stopdiggin]

5. Yes, but ....

No where near the cult of personality that Putin has cultivated over the past 20 years. That changes the dynamic - both within the government machine, as well as the relationship to the Russian citizens. Does an unpopular war effort (with perhaps measures upping the ante necessary to sustain) become more, or less, tenable under the new equation?

(note, I am making no prediction at all about how likely, or immediate, any such scenario involving Putin's health really is)

[RKP5637]

11. All good points!!! n/t

[PortTack]

4. That's the big question on everyone's mind for sure!

The person he gave the nod to to be in charge if he were to have surgery, they say is just as awful

[Turbineguy]

6. And after the surgery

will Patrushev step down?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

8. Yes, he'll step down. He'll either step down from that office, or ...

... he'll step down from a fifth-floor balcony.

[Mz Pip]

7. Even if it's true

What can we do about it? The next in line is just as bad.

Meet the new boss,
Same as the old boss.

[Jilly_in_VA]

9. I do not wish ill on anyone

May G-d deal with Volodya as he deserves to be dealt with.

I wouldn't want to be him when he meets his maker.

[Throck]

10. With a little luck in the next 24 hours...

Gall bladder, kidney stones, appendicitis, shingles and hemorrhoids the size of a cabbage. But nothing too serious. Just vengefully painful.

[Vogon_Glory]

12. If we were to revert to old-style Kremlin-watching, I'd guess

That he might be ill, but we won’t be able say he’s dead until he’s on display in a coffin with the lid up.

And even then I’ll have my doubts.

[WarGamer]

13. I speak with 100% certainty... I'm sure...

That when this current group of "older" folks in Russia are gone... the young and middle aged are just like Western Europeans.

Within 10-20 years... Russia will be just another France, Germany or Italy.

[Igel]

14. Hardly.

The most convincing analysis I've seen claims that there are 4 prototypical groups (I use the word "prototypical" in the sense here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_theory.)

A small percentage are in line with Putin. They are distributed, get their power and importance from lining up behind power. #1.

A somewhat larger group are quasi-WEIRD. They're more like Westerners. Not exactly, but they're educated, urban, and 'netizens. Educated. And many of them fled Russia on 2/25/2022 and the weeks following. #2. We'd call them "anywheres", to use a rather obtuse classification--they have more in common with educated folk in India and France and Argentina and Nigeria than they do with most people in their own cultural group or country.

An even larger group, the middle group, are "middle-class" Russians. They have jobs, mortgages--and they have a standard of living unheard of in the "socialist paradise" of the USSR. Yes, mortgages and "mortgage slavery", but they aren't in a small little apt. for 30 years with promises of being able, eventually, to move to a bigger one. Or having to find ways, when parents die, of swapping two small apts. for a bigger one (Yuriy Trifonov's "The Exchange" is a soviet classic short novel). They're too busy making payments, being consumers, and afraid that either the system will shake and they'll lose everything, or they'll lose their jobs and lose everything. Think 1950s white suburbia versus American black homeowners in 2009. #3.

Then there are the "deplorables"--a group of 20-25% of Russians. They live in poor areas, they are poor, their lives are brutish. They often live in rural areas, are poorly educated, and for them, toilets may be a sign of privilege. Theft? Where I live isn't wealthy, and people go around to see what they can steal--it's not full-fledged "bars on the windows", but there are some. Go a subdivision or two over, and they're standard (we get the spill-over). I have no trouble imagining that in some parts if you leave something outside and it has any value, it's gone by morning. The claim is that for these Russians--whether ethnic Russians or just cultural Russians--Bucha is every-day life, if you're suddenly surrounded by those of a less aggressive, survivalist and triumphalist culture that aren't used to open warfare being the daily routine. (That struck me as insane. Now imagine this: Put together army units of 1500 men, where every man in the unit is MS-13 or, for a different set of *allied* units, some Chicago or LA black gang. That sounds horrifying. And the point is suddenly unreasonably reasonable.)

[WarGamer]

17. I actually know people and have spent time there...

That article sounds like the 1990's...

[Baked Potato]

15. Bad case of Blunder-itus, with advancing Bungle sores. Nt

[wackadoo wabbit]

16. Well, it's not a blood cancer if he's going to have surgery for it

Unless he's getting a bone marrow transplant. But if that's the case, we won't see anything of him until the stem cells engraft, and that takes weeks.

"Blood cancer" does explain the steroid "moon face" that he seems to have, though. High-dose corticosteroids is a treatment for some forms of leukemia.