‘Ailing Putin’ exit plan forecast

Russian President Vladimir Putin will land in a long-term medical facility by next year, a former MI6 chief predicted amid rumors that the Kremlin boss’s health is failing.

Sir Richard Dearlove said on the One Decision podcast that Putin, 69, could be sent to a sanatorium as part of an exit strategy amid Russia’s fraught invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

“I’m really going to stick my neck out. I think he’ll be gone by 2023,” Dearlove, a co-host of the podcast, predicted. “Probably into the sanatorium, from which he will not emerge as leader of Russia.”

Putting Putin in the medical facility would be the “elegant” alternative to a coup, said Dearlove, who was head of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 until 2004. He cautioned that Moscow has no succession plan if Putin departs, but he believes the secretary of the Security Council of Russia, Nikolai Patrushev, would take over.

“If my thesis were fulfilled and Putin did disappear into a sanatorium, I think he’s the likely stand-in,” Dearlove said. “And of course the stand-in [in] this scenario probably becomes permanent. I mean, you know, there is no succession in the Russian leadership.”

Questions about Putin’s health have swirled since Russia’s war in Ukraine broke out. Last week Putin appeared to cling to a table days after there was speculation that he had undergone surgery to remove fluid from his abdomen.

An oligarch close to the Kremlin has said Putin is “very ill with blood cancer,” according to a secret recording obtained by New Lines Magazine. Claims about Putin’s health are unverified.