Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly took visits from a doctor specializing in thyroid cancer 35 times over four years, spending 166 days in each other’s presence, a new report claims.
The report comes from Proekt, which translates from Russian to The Project, a Russian outlet that has tracked the medical care that Putin has received since he ascended to the presidency in 2012. In that time, the outlet’s investigation found, the Russian leader had been in the care of oncology surgeon Yevgeny Selivanov. Selivanov’s nearly three dozen visits to Putin’s Sochi residence appear to imply that the 69-year-old president was being treated for thyroid cancer, something the Kremlin had never publicized and denied in the wake of the report.
“Over the course of Putin’s 23-year rule, the country doesn’t know a word of truth about the physical and emotional condition of the person ruling over it,” Proekt Editor-in-Chief Roman Badanin said in a video defending the investigation.
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Putin had even more frequent visits from Igor Esakov and Alexei Shcheglov, two otolaryngologists (also known as ear, nose, and throat specialists), according to the report. It also suggested that Putin secretly underwent an additional surgery last fall, noting that he “did not appear in public for the entire month of September. In medical circles, it is believed that the president was undergoing a complicated procedure related to some kind of thyroid disease during this period.”
In addition to the doctors’ visits, the report also claimed that the Russian leader had begun bathing in the blood of deer antlers. The antlers were hacksawed off from the animals in the spring, when the horns were “soft and full of blood,” according to the report. “Antler baths,” as the outlet called them, are commonly used in the Altai region of Russia, which borders Kazakhstan and Mongolia, and the Russian president has traveled for the service on multiple occasions.
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Asked about the report over the weekend, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied any claim that Putin had or has cancer.
Questions about the health of the secretive Russian leader, who will turn 70 in October, have long existed, though he has been open about his commitment to his fitness regimen. Interest in Putin ratcheted up in the wake of his military invasion of Ukraine.
Russia began invading Ukraine in late February and has thus far turned millions of women and children into refugees fleeing the violence. The bloodshed has also already killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians and an unknown number of Russians. Numerous efforts at peace talks have failed, and Ukraine has united in its resolve to fight the continued invasion, though it is unclear how long the country will be able to keep Russian forces from taking any major cities.
