Putin 'may already be dead' and Kremlin will soon give major clue, says expert
Vladimir Putin could very likely already be dead - and we'll start to get clues from the Kremlin very soon, according to a world affairs expert.
Prof Anthony Glees, security and intelligence expert at the University of Buckingham, says a power handover would also potentially see a shift back towards the international community and an end to the Ukraine war. He has named the two most likely candidates to take over from Putin if he has died.
Rumours have been rife for months about the Russian President's declining health, with Telegram channel General SVR claiming he suffered a cardiac arrest at his Moscow home last weekend. The channel claims it has a source inside the 71-year-old dictator's entourage, though the Kremlin swiftly denied he had fallen ill, before further unconfirmed reports claimed Putin had died.
Prof Glees told the Mirror: "I think we will know very soon. If he has died then the Kremlin will be trying to manage the transition in a seamless and smooth way, so what we can expect over the days ahead are more leaks, more denials, but a gradual sight of rearranging the furniture, slowly beginning to look different. We’ll start to hear of other things going on."
Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year (AFP via Getty Images)There has been suggestion Putin is suffering with Parkinson's, as well as various forms of cancer, among other ailments. Prof Glees said being in power for around a quarter of a century is a "fairly amazing feat" and which is "likely to cause even the healthiest human being significant stress". He continued: "You’ve then got the things that he’s doing, waging this war in Ukraine, which he’s not winning, he’s clearly not winning - it’s clear to everyone. He has to win it in order not to lose it, if you see what I mean.
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"The Ukrainians will win it by not losing it but he has got to win it actively and he’s not winning it. The latest estimations say about 180,000 Russians have died or been wounded, and it's probably more than that. You add this to the stories that he is ill in some way and the pictures that we have of him, which allow one to be very suspicious of what is actually going on."
Prof Glees said pictures of Putin in recent months show him looking "entirely pokerfaced, he can't really move his face at all - which is a symptom of Parkinson's disease". He also agreed that body doubles are being used, including, in particular, footage of the president supposedly driving a Mercedes over the Kerch Bridge into Crimea.
"Take all these things together, and the Telegram channel, could he already be dead?" he said. "Could he have been dead for some time? I think it is not unlikely. I declare an interest, there is nothing that I would like more than for him to be dead because he is a monster but I do realise that that should not colour one’s judgement and so I do try not to let it. I think he may already be dead."
Putin rose up during the Soviet era as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel before resigning in 1991 to begin a political career. Prof Glees described his role as a "plum job" and his government has been characterised by the Soviet trait of "lying consistently about the leadership".
"As we know from the Lenin mausoleum...They have an almost obsessional interest in keeping dead people alive. If you see Lenin in that mausoleum he looks like a waxwork, look at Putin, he looks like a waxwork," he said, laughing. "Of course, today you wouldn’t use embalming fluids, you’d use Artificial Intelligence. It would be very easy, most 15 year old nerds could do some photoshopping.
Putin drove a Mercedes over the missile-damaged Crimean Bridge - though Prof Glees believes this was a body double (Kremlin.ru / East2west News)"The point being, the Soviet state never had any interest in destabilising whatever it was that it was up to at any given moment. The tradition, the obsession with not dying, the need for stability, particularly as the war in Ukraine is going badly, the need for the people who backed Putin to have a Putin there, their world will collapse if Putin is not there. A Kremlin denial is not worth a row of beans. This is a world of whispers, this is a wilderness of mirrors, trying to pick up the reflection. So you then come onto the question of who would replace him if he really was dead?"
Prof Glees said there are two likely candidates to take over from Putin if he has died. They are Ramzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov, Head of the Chechen Republic, and Dmitry Patrushev, Russia's Minister of Agriculture. He described them as the "only two people who come into the picture".
He said Patrushev is "deeply embedded in Putin's system". He continued: "He is clearly trusted by Putin. He’s quite young, he’s 46 years old, he’s got that look about him that suggests that he is a likely candidate. On the other hand, you’ve got that awful Chechen warlord Akhmadovich Kadyrov, who’s 47, great big fat freak and killer. He is a thug, a thoroughly nasty piece of work."
Dmitry Patrushev, Russia’s Minister of Agriculture (Kremlin.ru/e2w)"If there were a coup against Putin, against those people trying to pretend he’s not dead or very ill. That would be the Chechen warlord, he’s a man of action and has troops behind him. If, on the other hand, what we are seeing a Soviet style transfer of power, the Kremlin are calling the shots, they are framing the narrative, they want to pace it, then I think it’s Patrushev."
Prof Glees said another problem with Kadyrov is there are rumours his health is poor and he has kidney problems, as well as being "very overweight". In terms of what is in the best interests of the West, he said Patrushev is "more likely to be somebody you could do a deal with".
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"If Patrushev has any sense, and he looks to me like he’s a smart cookie, he’s doing the right things. He’s the person the West would like. Kadyrov, on the other hand, he's basically a chaos merchant. He hasn’t got the skills that propelled Putin to the top that were recognised early on by the KGB. He’s a smart man Putin, he knows how to manipulate people and to buy people off, bribe people. Patrushev knows all this, but Kadyrov is a thug, he only knows how to blow people up.
Governor of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov (Getty Images)He continued: "There’s that fear of don’t let go of Putin for finding something worse but worse than Putin doesn’t exist, he’s as bad as you get. Putin is a coldblooded, calculated killer, I don’t think Patrushev is and I don't think Kadyrov is coldblooded, I think he’s hot blooded, and in the end hot blooded people don’t do terribly well."
Referring to the Ukraine war, he said there's a good chance a new leader brings it to an end. "Putin is so bogged down in it, it either ends in his victory or his death. One way or another, and it’s not going to be his victory, NATO is not going to let him win. It’s not going to happen and he’s not going to use nuclear weapons, because if he was, he would have done it already."
Asked how an end to the war could come about and when, if indeed a new leader is brought in shortly, Prof Glees said: "There’s this phrase 'General Winter', the bitter cold in eastern Europe will freeze the fighting more or less where it is. We’re not far off that point. It gets colder and colder, and once General Winter hits, that would be a good time to change over. The Russians have got territory, a new leader could barter.
Prof Glees says the end of Putin could mean Russia returns to the global community (AP)"He wouldn’t necessarily have to win, he could say give us a bit and we’ll go away. People might lean on Zelensky and say there are one or two places, Crimea is one of them. A deal could be done with a new leader. That would make sense for the West, because if we’ve got this business in the Middle East to contend with it would be very much in our interests that the Ukraine war comes to an end."
He added: "These sanctions are hitting Russia and hitting Russians, the state controlled media says they’ve got their national identity back but in the end forgive the cliche but 'it’s the economy, stupid'. And that applies to Russia as it does to anywhere else. It was the economy that brought the Soviets down, that was it. It was the fact that people couldn’t buy stuff and they saw people in the West could buy stuff.
"It's terrible news from the battle front, Ukraine has punched a hole in Russia’s three line defences, they are carrying out all these skirmishes on the other side of the river, Biden's giving them all the arms they want. With a new leader you’ve got a fresh start, we can offer Russia a way back into the community of nations again. You’d have to be stark stirring mad not to go for that. It cannot be done with Putin there, he is so deeply entrenched. But if there’s a biological solution to the problem of Putin we should be cheering."
Referring to when the Kremlin could announce something - if he has died - Prof Glees said: "Often, history speeds up and gets a kind of convulsion and if there’s a big change in China, that might mean the Kremlin will want to be wait and let things settle down. But it can’t go on forever, if he has died they’ll pick the best time and with the peace of the world hanging by a thread in the Middle East, now is not necessarily the best time. They may let this story run and run but in the end something will come out, there will be more clues."
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