Paranoids also have enemies. Vladimir Putin’s undying persecutory anguish is becoming more justified after the invasion of Ukraine. The military is furious at the casualties and lack of tactics.
The siloviki, as members of the state security apparatus from which Putin emerged, are known to leak information. And with each new public appearance, the internet is awash with speculation about the notorious hypochondriac’s health. Hand tremors and hesitant steps cannot be measured by minutes of exposure, but this month an investigative report was published that fuels the rumor widely circulated among Moscow’s elite: Putin is suffering from cancer.
The website Proekt Media, now edited from exile by Roman Badanin, found that the Russian president traveled dozens of times accompanied by a reinforced contingent of doctors to his sumptuous residence in Sochi, on the edge of the Black Sea, between 2016 and 2019.
The group included a thyroid surgeon oncologist. The report, which the vast majority of Russians were unaware of, was disturbing enough to warrant a denial from the Kremlin spokesman in an exchange of messages via Telegram with a Russian journalist. “Fiction and untruth”, said Dmitry Peskov, about an alleged surgery by Putin.
The parade of images of tanks and heavy material destroyed by the Ukrainians that culminated in the attack and sinking of the warship Moskva (Moscow, in Russian) is also not shown on Russian TV, but the information blackout begins to break down around Putin.
A pair of exiled Russian reporters, perhaps the journalists with the most contacts in the siloviki establishment, expressed surprise at the sudden loquacity of their sources, after weeks of silence at the start of the invasion. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan write in an article that their phones are receiving encrypted calls and messages from Moscow again.
The military communicates deep dissatisfaction with the turnaround of Putin, who, unable to occupy Kiev, decided to settle for the more modest goal of taking new territories in Donbass. Officials blame the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, for the intelligence fiasco on the Ukrainian resistance.
A blogger and well-known veteran of the dreaded Spetsnaz military special force posted a video asking: “Dear Vladimir, please decide: are we fighting a war or masturbating?”
If Putin’s health is more fragile than the Kremlin admits, the intense circulation of the palace rumor would weigh on the behavior of those in charge of carrying out orders in Ukraine. After all, the president who turns 70 in October and changed the Russian constitution to stay in power until 2036 has no apparent successor, and his sudden departure could guarantee a period of instability with plenty of scapegoats.
Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev, central character of the new documentary “Navalni”, recalls the reaction of a data trafficker from whom he bought information to identify the FSB agents responsible for poisoning the Russian opposition leader with agent Novichok.
“I thought you were just a criminal, but a journalist?”, complained, disconsolately, the drug dealer. Among Putin’s many miscalculations in this war, one was elementary. In Russian kleptocracy, everything is for sale.
