It’s a thirty-second video in all, during which Vladimir Putin is shown for less than half the time. The opening scene of the nocturnal summit held with the heads of the security apparatus, from the minister of the interior to that of defence, from the attorney general to the director of the secret service. But on the president’s face there are movements that seem out of tune: the lower lip and chin seem to tremble, with a condition similar to the effects of a paresis. It can only be the load of stress accumulated in three dramatic days dominated by tension, such as to wear out even an iron leader like him. However, Putin is still seventy years old.
The video with the security chiefs is the only one broadcast practically live, something that hasn’t happened for months. In the long message to the nation issued shortly before by the Kremlin, the president appeared perfectly in control. However, it was a recording prepared in advance, with ample scope for manipulation.
Rumors of Putin’s health problems have been circulating for several months, but have always been denied. Not only from his spokesperson Peskov, answering a direct question about hypothetical cancer cures. They were also analyzed in one of the top secret documents stolen last spring from the Pentagon database, which evaluates the statements of some Ukrainian exponents on chemotherapy to define them as unfounded. Many rumors had circulated a year ago when during an interview with the defense minister, the president had always grabbed the table with his right hand, as if to hide a tremor. “He’s entirely sane, too sane,” CIA Director William Burns replied last July.
In the short video of the night summit, the attitude of Defense Minister Sergej Shoigu was underlined: he doesn’t wear a military uniform, he always keeps his eyes down, never raising his head, and is observed with questioning looks by the other participants. Details that criminologists interpret as signs of political disgrace: Shoigu is Prigozhin’s rival, considered primarily responsible for the army’s inertia in the face of Wagner’s march on Moscow.