Adding to rumors that Russian President Vladimir Putin is close to death, Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s defense intelligence chief, said in an interview on Wednesday that he has intelligence that the leader has terminal cancer.
“He’s been ill for a long time,” Budanov told ABC News. “I’m sure he has cancer. I think he’s going to die very quickly.” I expect it soon.”
When asked how he got the information, Budanov said it was human intelligence.
“We just know, from people, from sources,” he said.
Budanov believes Putin will die soon, but not before a final humiliating defeat in Ukraine.
The spy chief said, “This war must end before your death… We will win it in 2023.”
He also said that there would be a change of power in Russia after the death of Putin, who ruled for more than two decades.
Budanov said: “We should not be afraid of his transformation, as it will benefit the whole world.”
But others have warned that the regime’s future direction is far from certain, The Sun reported.
It depends on the outcome of a power struggle that has already begun in anticipation of Putin’s departure, said Russian war analyst and former loyalist Igor Strelkov.
“The fight for the political Olympus has begun among the groups surrounding Putin,” he said.
He added that the battle to replace Putin is unfolding to the point where “even we can see it.”
Strelkov, a former colonel in the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) spy agency, was a key figure in Putin’s annexation of Crimea and the subjugation of Ukraine’s Donetsk region in 2014.
Names in the mix include Putin’s friend Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner’s private army, and loyalist forces in the Defense Ministry around struggling Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev.
Armchair diagnoses of the Russian leader have gained traction since the war began on February 24, as social media users and analysts try to interpret footage that shows him apparently limping across Red Square, clinging to his desk and flashing a listless right arm.
Cold War historian Sergey Radchenko tweeted that he took spy chief Budanov’s “claims with a pinch of salt, as they were likely intended for a psych operation,” but added that his record of predictions “isn’t bad.”. “this is partly a function of the vagueness,” Newsweek noted.
Budanov’s comments come as the head of Russian analysis at the Danish military intelligence service, identified only as Joakim, said in an interview with Copenhagen-based Berlingske newspaper that he did not believe Putin was terminally ill. However, he said he had likely received hormone treatment for cancer, which explained her “moon-shaped face.”
However, Joakim believed that Putin was in chronic pain after several falls and accidents.
“That’s why he tends to sit down and grip things hard. It’s to ease the pain,” the intelligence officer said.
