Putin himself has had only two phone calls since then, and his public appearance in a week is said to be an old recording. “We look forward to seeing half of Putin’s corpse shown to the public so that even the final figures of the Russian government can understand who makes decisions and is responsible for the state of the country.” According to the “SVR-General”, without Putin’s authority, the elite could reject Petrushev’s decisions and “everything could quickly turn into a political crisis”. “Without Putin, the Putin regime is a shapeless nonsense”.

According to the “SVR-General”, the background of Putin’s disappearance is an operation on the night of May 17, which the Kremlin chief must undergo “as soon as possible” at the insistence of his doctors. The “SVR-General” did not comment on the nature of the intervention, but three days later Putin was reportedly too weak to attend Security Council meetings, it is said. His condition worsened again in the night of 21 May and became stable the very next morning.

In fact, Putin’s last public appearance to be taken lightly was on May 16, a day before the alleged operation. On that day, Putin received the heads of state and government of the former Soviet republics in Moscow. At a meeting with Tajikistan’s ruler Imomalij Rahmon, Putin attracted attention with strong, apparently uncontrolled movements of his left leg, fueling speculation about possible Parkinson’s disease. (Watch the scene in the video above or here.) The Kremlin had already debunked this rumor in the autumn of 2020.

But will the end of Putin as head of the Kremlin also be the beginning of a democratic Russia? Intelligence agent Richard Dearlov suspects: “There are no plans for an orderly transfer of power in Russia. This regime will fall in the next one to two years, but it will not end.”