Oscar-winning director Oliver
Stone has revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has had cancer.
Stone said in a new podcast
that Putin had suffered from cancer and that he believed he had overcome it –
something which has not been confirmed to the Russian people.
He said: “Remember this, Mr.
Putin has had this cancer and I think he’s licked it,’ he told podcast
interviewer Lex Fridman. But he’s also been isolated because of Covid.”
Explaining why Putin may have
misjudged the invasion of Ukraine, Stone speculated that ‘perhaps he lost touch
– contact – with people’.
It was not clear if Putin was
getting the correct intelligence, he admitted, before adding: “You would think
he was not well informed perhaps, about the degree of cooperation he would get
from the [ethnic Russians] in Ukraine…That would be one factor, that he didn’t assess
the situation correctly.”
Meanwhile, Christopher Steele,
who wrote a dossier on Donald Trump and alleged Russian interference in the
2016 US election campaign, told Sky News: “Certainly, from what we’re
hearing from sources in Russia and elsewhere, is that Putin is, in fact, quite
seriously ill.”
Meanwhile, an oligarch with
close ties to the Russian leader has reportedly been recorded as saying
“Putin is very ill with blood cancer”.
In a recording obtained by
the US magazine New Lines, the unnamed oligarch was heard discussing Putin’s
health with a Western venture capitalist.
Speculations around the
Russian President’s health intensified since the Ukraine war as the leaders
appeared frail at public events including the Victory Day
celebrations last week. In the photos and videos on social
media, Putin had a thick green cover draped over his legs as he sat among
Second World War veterans and senior dignitaries to watch a military parade in
Moscow’s Red Square.
Putin, in a black bomber
jacket, was also spotted coughing and was the only person among his group who
needed additional coverings to combat the relatively mild 9-degree Celsius
weather, reported the Independent.
The Russian oligarch says in
the recording that Putin had surgery on his back linked to his blood cancer
shortly before ordering the invasion of Ukraine. The president has gone
“crazy”, he adds.
Recently, a video meeting
between Putin and Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu, showed him tightly
clutching the table, not letting go for the entirety of the 12-minute clip.
“We all hope that Mr. Putin dies. He absolutely ruined Russia’s economy, Ukraine’s economy, and many
other economies – ruined absolutely,” the oligarch says. “The problem
is with his head. One crazy guy can turn the world upside down.”
The name of the oligarch has
been kept anonymous by the western businessman as he recorded the
conversation without his permission, reported New Lines magazine.
A top Ukrainian military
official has also claimed the Kremlin leader has cancer and other ailments. He
told the Sky News that Putin is in a “very bad psychological and
physical condition and he is very sick”.
Comments Russia’s invasion,
which Putin calls a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect
it from fascists, has jolted European security. Kyiv and its Western allies say
the fascism assertion is a baseless pretext for an unprovoked war of
aggression.
It could also be that his
‘isolation from normal activity and no longer meeting people ‘face to face’
due to health concerns for Putin over Covid may have led to errors, Stone
speculated.
