Putin is ‘entirely too healthy’, says CIA chief amid intense speculations

While international scrutiny of Russian President Vladimir Putin has intensified over recent months, the head of US foreign spy agency gave his candid assessment at an annual security forum on Wednesday.

When asked if Putin was unhealthy or unstable, CIA director Bill Burns said that the Russian leader was “entirely too healthy” but added that his remarks didn’t constitute “a formal intelligence judgment.”

“There are lots of rumours about President Putin’s health and as far as we can tell, he’s entirely too healthy.”

A slight misstep by Putin after touchdown in Tehran set off an intense round of speculation over his health condition. Him coughing during a public appearance on Wednesday added fuelled the rumours further. Interfax news agency quoted Putin as saying he had caught a slight cold during a visit to Iran the previous day.

“It was very hot in Tehran yesterday, plus 38 (degrees Celsius), and the air conditioning was very strong there. So I apologize,” Putin, 69, was quoted as saying.

The Kremlin dismissed the speculative media reports saying the Russian president was in good health.

“Everything is fine with his health,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in reply to a question at his daily briefing.

“You know that Ukrainian information specialists, and American and British ones, have been throwing out various fakes about the state of the president’s health in recent months – these are nothing but fakes,” he added.

Putin’s physical well-being has been a matter of speculation for a long time, largely because of the amount of power vested in one leader. Without a clear successor, according to a CNN report, Russia is “always a few sneezes away from a full-blown political crisis.”

Putin seated at opposite ends of long tables as a precaution against coronavirus disease (Covid-19) during meetings with foreign and Russian officials, and him, at times, appeared to be walking stiffly have triggered such speculations in the past.

The head of Britain’s armed forces dismissed speculation that Putin is suffering from ill-health as “wishful thinking”.

“I think some of the comments that he’s not well or that actually surely somebody’s going to assassinate him or take him out, I think they’re wishful thinking,” chief of the defence staff Admiral Tony Radakin said in a BBC television interview aired on Sunday.