Russian President Vladimir Putin suffered a devastating health problem at 1 a.m. Saturday, according to a Telegram social media channel that claims to keep track of the leader’s health.
The General SVR Channel said Putin, 69, suffered “severe nausea,” the Daily Mail reported.
The infamous Russian leader had medical personnel rushing to his bedside.
“Putin on the night of Friday July 22 to Saturday July 23 needed urgent medical care,” the General SVR Channel said, according to the Daily Mail report.
“At about 1 a.m., the medical workers on duty at [his] residence were summoned to the president. Putin complained of severe nausea.”
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“Twenty minutes later, an additional team of doctors with the president’s attending physicians was called.”
“It is known that doctors provided assistance and were near Putin for three hours, and after the president’s condition improved, they left his chambers.”
Russian political scientist Valery Solovey has long claimed Putin is in ill health.
“The Americans, the CIA particularly, have information on the real state of health of the Russian president. They definitely know that he has serious troubles, including mental ones,” Solovey said, according to the Daily Mail.
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But other speculations about Putin’s health contrast with Solovey’s.
According to the BBC, William Burns, the director of the CIA, said last weekend that Putin is healthy — “too healthy,” in fact — and claimed there is no intelligence that the Russian leader’s health is in bad shape.
The Kremlin also weighed in on the rumors, according to the BBC.
“In recent months, Ukrainian, American and British so-called information ‘specialists’ have thrown around various fakes about the health of the president. But it is nothing but fakes,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Thursday.
Despite the circulation of rumors, the General SVR Telegram channel claimed that the Russian President will most likely not be appearing in televised meetings for the next week, Daily Mail reported.
Instead, “deep-fake” technology will be used, or a Putin look-alike, also known as a double, will temporarily replace the Russian leader.
Ukranian spy chief Kyrylo Budanov said that Putin was replaced by a double during his recent visit to Iran, multiple news outlets reported.
In an interview with Ukraine’s 1+1 news channel, Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, commented on video footage of Putin getting off a plane in Tehran, Iran, according to The U.S. Sun.
“Please look at the moment of Putin’s exit from the plane. Is it Putin at all?” he said.
According to BBC, the idea of Putin being replaced by a double has been brought up before.
In the early 2000s, the Russian leader said he was offered the chance to have a double to temporarily replace him, but he claimed that he rejected the idea.
But doubles were used in place of leaders during the Soviet Union era.
Leonid Brezhnev, the former General Secretary of the Soviet Union from 1964-1982, is said to have used doubles during his time in office, according to the Daily Mail.
Joseph Stalin, the former General Secretary of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1953, is also said to have used doubles throughout his reign.
Two of Stalin’s doubles have come forward and publicly stated they replaced him on numerous occasions.
One, known only as “Rashid,” claimed he filled in for Stalin during public appearances when the leader was afraid of being assassinated.
Rashid also said he replaced Stalin to give the public impression that Stalin was in a healthy state.
Felix Dadaev also publicly announced in 2008 that he had been one of Stalin’s doubles.
