Vladimir Putin may be forced to give up control of the war in Ukraine for days as he is set for cancer surgery, a ‘Kremlin insider’ has claimed.
The Russian dictator will reportedly nominate hardline Security Council head and ex-FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev to take control of the invasion while he is under the knife.
Shadowy Patrushev, 70, is seen as a key architect of the war strategy so far – and the man who convinced Putin that Kyiv is awash with neo-Nazis.
The extraordinary claims appeared on popular Telegram channel General SVR, which says its source is a well-placed figure in the Kremlin.
Putin, pictured last week, reportedly has Parkinson’s, cancer and schizophrenic symptoms
General SVR reported that Putin has abdominal cancer and Parkinson’s 18 months ago.
Hardliner Nikolai Patrushev will reportedly take control of the war in Ukraine while Putin is under the knife to treat abdominal cancer
He has reportedly delayed surgery, which will now not take place before the Victory Day commemoration of Russia’s World War Two victory in Red Square on May 9.
The news comes amid speculation Putin will launch an all-out war across Ukraine and order mass mobilisation of military-age men, a considerable political risk.
The surgery had been scheduled for the second half of April but was delayed, SVR claimed.
‘Putin was recommended to undergo surgery, the date of which is being discussed and agreed,’ the outlet stated.
‘There seems to be no particular urgency, but it cannot be delayed either.’
Ex-FSB chief Patrushev (left) is a fearsome Kremlin official and war advocate (2015 image)
It went on: ‘The Russian President Vladimir Putin has oncology, and the latest problems identified during [his latest] examination are associated with this disease.’
He also suffers from ‘Parkinson’s disease and schizoaffective disorder’, which carries symptoms of schizophrenia including hallucinations and mania.
The Kremlin has always strongly denied Putin has medical problems and portrays he is in robust health, even as he has been mysteriously absent in recent years.
In a video detailing the General SVR claims, the outlet’s source – supposedly an anonymous former high-ranking Kremlin military figure – said: ‘Putin has discussed that he will be undergoing medical procedures.
Patrushev and Putin are both ex-FSB and have known each other for many years (2008 image)
‘Doctors insist that he needs an operation, but the date has not yet been determined.’
The source went on: ‘I don’t know for exactly how long [he will be incapacitated after the surgery]…
‘I think it’ll be for a short time.’
Putin was ‘unlikely to agree to transfer power’ but was ready to put in place a ‘charge d’affaires’ to control Russia and the war effort.
They continued: ‘So, while Putin has the operation and comes to his senses…likely two or three days…the actual control of the country passes only to [Nikolai] Patrushev.’
Such a move would be surprising since under the constitution, power should pass solely to the prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin.
Bloated Putin was seen gripping a table while slouching in his chair during a televised meeting with his defence minister Sergei Shoigu. He has been unable to shake cancer rumours
The 56-year-old is a low-profile technocrat without known military or secret service links.
The outlet said the choice of spymaster Patrushev – which came after a two-hour ‘heart to heart’ with Putin – was the ‘worst option’.
‘What if, all of a sudden, Putin manifests particularly severe health problems?
‘It was possible to contain it for some time, but now the course of the disease is progressing.
‘I do not want to voice any forecasts now, so as not to reassure you once again, because in this situation you should not be very hopeful.’
In another post, the outlet said: ‘We know that Putin made it clear to Patrushev that he considers him almost the only truly trusted person and friend in the system of power.
‘Further, the president promised that in case of a sharp deterioration of his (Putin’s) health, the actual management of the country would be transferred, temporarily, to Patrushev.’
The latest post on the suspected medical problems said: ‘Putin’s doctors insist on the need for him to undergo surgery in the near future.
‘And although Putin did not give his consent in principle and the date of the operation was not agreed, he hurried to explain himself and get Patrushev’s reaction and agreement.’
Earlier it claimed Putin had been ‘prescribed new drugs’ from the West and given heavier doses.
‘According to our information, one of the new medicines recommended by doctors after oral administration caused side effects in Putin in the form of severe dizziness and weakness,’ said a post earlier this month.
‘The doctor who recommended this medicine has been removed from the treatment process and is being tested.
‘The drug itself, which was imported from one unfriendly state, is also being tested.’
Recent investigative reports by exiled Russian journalists have suggested Putin has thyroid cancer, and indicated he is constantly surrounded by a team of top doctors.
Attention has focused recently on his behaviour to control a seeming involuntary shake in his hand – renewing speculation of Parkinson’s first highlighted in 2020 by General SVR.
At a meeting with Defence minister Sergei Shoigu, he was seen firmly gripping a desk.
The channel said: ‘Many drew attention to the sickly appearance of the president, his puffy, swollen face and hands tightly clasped around the table top.
‘There is nothing surprising here.
‘Putin’s health has recently deteriorated, we have already written about this, and the president’s unhealthy appearance only confirms this.
‘For more than a month, the attending physicians have not been able to convince Putin to change the drugs that suppress the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, since the old ones no longer give the desired effect, and the president is simply afraid to experiment with new ones.
‘Clinging to the table with his hands is a way to hide a small but quite noticeable tremor.’
The channel has been linked to Professor Valery Solovey, 61, who in February, was held for a seven hour interrogation apparently possibly linked to the regular claims about Putin’s supposed medical and mental condition .
Solovoy was a professor at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) – attended by future top diplomats and spies.
The tell-tale tremor of a doomed tyrant: How Putin’s ‘uncontrollable’ shaking hand bears the hallmarks of Hitler’s Parkinson’s disease
Amid rumours about his poor health, a video showing Vladimir Putin’s shaking hand as he greeted Belarus’s leader resurfaced earlier this month.
The clip, which was filmed just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, showed him gripping a chair and pressing his hand to his chest to stop it shaking as he greeted Alexander Lukashenko.
It fueled further speculation of the state of his health after footage and images appeared to show his bloated face and slouching posture.
But the scenes of Putin’s apparent struggles are reminiscent of a clip that showed Adolf Hitler’s own failing health as Germany faced total defeat in the Second World war.
A resurfaced video showing Vladimir Putin’s hand shaking as he greeted Belarus’s leader Aleksander Lukashenko in February is reminiscent of a clip that revealed Adolf Hitler’s own failing health as his country faced total defeat in the Second World War.
In what was one of the last times the dictator was seen alive outside of his Berlin bunker, a propaganda video filmed in April 1945 showed him decorating members of the Hitler Youth who had been called up to defend Berlin.
The film was supposed to show how Hitler was still in command, even as the Soviet Union’s troops closed on the capital.
But a telling part of the footage was cut from the final version and was supposed to have been destroyed.
The clip, which was discovered in an East German film laboratory in the 1970s, showed the Nazi leader’s left hand shaking violently as he held it behind his back while greeting military officers during the same trip outside his bunker.
Many historians and experts believe that Hitler was suffering from Parkinson’s disease at the time the video was filmed. The condition hampers muscle control and impairs mobility.
British historian Richard Evans previously told how Hitler began to show symptoms of Parkinson’s disease earlier in the war.
He told the Smithsonian Channel in 2014 that symptoms of shaking in his left hand were ‘for a time’ cured after he was injured by the bomb that went off in the 1944 attempt on his life.
‘He had a shake in his left hand and for a time that was cured as it were by the bomb that went off on July 20, 1944.
‘As he said, that’s not the way I would choose of curing it. But soon after that, the shaking came back in his right side.
‘He began to drag his feet and shuffle. He began to speak in a more flat, less animated sort of way. Normally.’
Comparisons of footage filmed in 1940 and 1944 showed how Hitler’s mobility had appeared to decline during the course of the war.
Surviving records show how Hitler’s personal doctor Theodor Morell first noted Hitler’s tremor in 1941 but put it down to stress.
Then, in the final days of the war, he concluded that Hitler was suffering from ‘shaking palsy’ – the original name for Parkinson’s disease.
As well as impairing thought processes, Parkinson’s can impair posture and muscle control.
Hitler killed himself inside his bunker, which was built near Berlin’s Reich Chancellery, on April 30, 1945.
The mass murderer took his own life alongside his wife Eva Braun, who he had married the day before.
By then, Germany was on the brink of total defeat against Allied and Russian forces.
The Nazi dictator had launched a doomed invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which saw Joseph Stalin’s forces fight back and ultimately triumph against German troops.
Earlier this month human rights officials claimed that, just like in Nazi Germany, the Kremlin has resorted to recruiting children to boost its troop numbers in eastern Ukraine.
Moscow was said to be recruiting from youth clubs and conscripting 16-year-olds to replace the estimated 30,000 soldiers either killed, wounded or captured so far in the war.
So-called ‘patriotic clubs’ sprang up in Russian-occupied parts of eastern Ukraine following its invasion in 2014 as part of a campaign to promote the country’s culture in Luhansk and Donetsk.
The Ukrainian parliament commissioner on human rights Lyudmyla Denisova said: ‘The occupation authorities [of Luhansk and Donetsk] are conducting the mobilisation of children who participated in the so-called patriotic clubs, to the levels of illegal weapons formations.
‘They have been doing military training and there have been deaths among these teenagers [in Ukraine].
‘Now they are promoting the entry into the army of civilians, including children in the temporarily occupied territories.
‘In doing so, the Russian Federation has violated the laws and customs of war provided by the 1949 Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians… and the rights of children.
‘The recruitment of children is a violation of international law.’
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