Speculation started swirling after three anonymous sources quoted in a Newsweek report claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin has advanced cancer. The unidentified administration officials further allege President Putin was targeted for assassination in March.
Russia issued a rare denial of what may be disinformation from the Department of Homeland Security’s allegedly disbanded Disinformation Governance Board. The country’s official news agency, Tass, Monday published a statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov knocking rumors of Putin’s imminent demise.
“President Vladimir Putin makes public appearances on a daily basis,” Foreign Minister Lavrov said. “You can see him on TV screens, read and listen to his speeches. I don’t think that a sane person can suspect any signs of an illness or ailment in this man.”
“Putin’s grip is strong but no longer absolute,” says one of the senior intelligence officers quoted by Newsweek. “The jockeying inside the Kremlin has never been more intense during his rule, everyone sensing that the end is near.”
All three officials — one from the office of the Director of National Intelligence, one from a retired Air Force senior officer and one from the Defense Intelligence Agency — note that Putin’s isolation makes it hard for U.S. intelligence to accurately assess Putin’s status and health.
“One source of our best intelligence, which is contact with outsiders, largely dried up as a result of the Ukraine war. Putin has had few meetings with foreign leaders,” said the official from the office of the Director of National Intelligence, according to a Daily Wire report. “Putin’s isolation has thus increased levels of speculation.”
“I’ll leave it on the conscience of those who disseminate such rumors despite daily opportunities for everyone to see how he and others look like,” Russia’s foreign minister told France’s TF1 television.
One of the intelligence people peddling stories of Putin’s poor health is a former MI6 officer in Great Britain’s intelligence service.
“Meetings of the security council that are shown to supposedly last for a whole hour are actually broken up into several sections,” said former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, during an interview with LBC Radio. “[Putin] goes out and receives some kind of medical treatment between those sections.”
Steele is the author of the infamously inaccurate “Steele Dossier” that was used to tarnish former President Donald Trump.
If the reports about Putin’s health that Steele has publicly paraded since March are as full of falsehoods as his dossier on Trump, the Russian leader may live for decades.
Source From: Resist The Mainstream
