Key Points and Summary – For years, rumors have swirled about Vladimir Putin’s declining health, with speculation ranging from cancer to Parkinson’s disease.
-While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy boldly predicted Putin’s imminent death earlier this year, the 72-year-old Russian leader remains in power.
-This constant “death watch” highlights a critical uncertainty at the heart of the Ukraine war: there is no clear successor to Putin.
-The question of who or what comes after him creates a profound and dangerous instability for Russia and the world, making the endgame of the current conflict impossible to predict.
The Putin Death Watch
Back in March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a bold and shocking claim: his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, will “die soon,” and that the Russian president’s infirmity would serve to bring about the end of the war.
“He will die soon, and that’s a fact, and it will come to end,” Zelenskyy said.
The comment was made in an interview with European reporters, although the Ukrainian leader did not elaborate on why, exactly, he believes Putin isn’t long for this world.
Months have passed since then, and it doesn’t appear that the prediction was accurate, as the Russian leader remains very much alive.
A Parade of Putin Health Rumors
There’s a long history of speculation about what’s happening with Putin’s health.
A report in The Independent, in 2024, listed a series of illnesses Putin has been rumored to suffer from over the years, from cancer to a cardiac arrest to Parkinson’s Disease, although the Kremlin has denied all.
Whether Putin has suffered any of those diseases or maladies is unclear, but what is clear is that he remains alive and in office.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has also been the subject of longstanding health rumors of different varieties, including a period when he lost weight, and experts speculated on whether this meant good or bad things for Kim’s standing.
As for Putin, the reports have often been relatively thin, including a 2005 report in The Atlantic that, judging by video of his inauguration, Putin may have suffered a stroke.
“In late 2016, Russian historian and political analyst Valery Solovei said Putin might be forced to step back from his role for health-related reasons. Putin did not. Again in 2020, Solovei and others variously claimed that Putin had cancer, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, or leprosy and would imminently resign. He didn’t,” Legion Magazine wrote in an April 2025 history of the Putin illness rumors.
“In December 2022, Solovei announced Putin was being treated with cancer drugs for an unspecified, advanced-stage cancer and “the end is already in sight.” It may have been, but he’s still alive.”
After Putin?
While most recent American presidents have lived an uncommonly long time—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush all lived into their 90s, with Carter passing away at the age of 100 last year—Soviet and Russian leaders haven’t enjoyed the same longevity.
The three Soviet leaders who died in quick succession in the 1980s, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, were 75, 69, and 73 years old, respectively. Mikhail Gorbachev reached the age of 91, although his death came after he had been out of power for decades.
Zelenskyy was right in the sense that all of us die, eventually. Putin is 72 years old, and while he’s younger than the last two US presidents by nearly a decade, he’s not going to live forever. A day will eventually come when he’s no longer the president of Russia.
The truth is, Putin does not appear to have designated a clear successor, and no one knows what Russia might look like in the vacuum of a post-Putin era.
The Week looked, earlier this year, at who might succeed Putin as Russia’s leader, since Putin is “entering the twilight of his life after dominating Russian politics for 25 years.”
About the Author: Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, national security, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
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taco
July 16, 2025 at 4:53 pm
Most probably Putin has leprosy.
The disease that used to ravage Europe just over 500 hundred years ago. Now still present in isolated places in south Asia and south-east Asia.
But very likely, Putin’s leprosy is mild and not affecting his appearance at all
Whatever it is, mild leprosy or not, it’s time for Putin to go.
Putin is standing in the way of a sure Russian victory in the Donbass conflict, he doesn’t even know that Russia is still fighting and surviving strictly due to the generosity and amazing level of selflessness shown by north Korea.
Had north Korea behaved toward Russia like what china is doing today, ukro nazis would already be marching through the streets of Moscow, not those border towns in kursk.
To hell with Putin.
Swamplaw Yankee
July 19, 2025 at 1:38 am
Finally, a topic with 4 D. The op-ed is worthwhile. But, who of the peer reviewers can do it justice?
The USA has a great role in this debate, which seems so secret. The Break-up of the Orc muscovite elite Federation is just ahead. The power vacuum is already a bit unsettling.
The problem is the USA. The Yankee had vile history. Right at the end of the second world warm the Yankee deluded the WEST with dreams of “one world” to be established with a vile fornication with Stalin in the United Nations. Forget the word justice there. The nice, but uneducated American people faced bitter awakenings with Nationalist China, Manchuria, Tibet, the far east, eastern europe, the middle east, Korean war, the Yankee blundering just goes on + on.
The cold war was a long line of POTUS effort to keep Russian in a circle, checked in. In 2014 POTUS Obama had marxist urgings and unilaterally greenlighted the loss of the WEST’s geopolitical advantage in Ukraine’s Crimea to the prime vile cold war enemy of the WEST : Puitn.
Now, the Yankee creation of a communist Han dictatorship is a reality, existential in threat. When the Federation collapses, Han CCP Zi ( or whoever) must take a huge swath of the captive nations that the orc muscovite elite still subjugate.
The FDR sell out of the Han people to the MAO tiny clique will impact these captive ethnics. Can these nations break out with no blood shed out of the rump ruskie grasp? Or, who can speculate accurately the Han muslim CCP gestault on their expansion?
Putin is gravely ill with his orc genetic need to run the ancient ethnic russian business of sex trading in Ukrainian children. Back in 1616 for muslim Ottoman gold or today for russian popularity, this “Lolita” sickness defines this persona we know as Putin.. The question is valid for all of us American hoi paloi. WE are certainly a foil but for what do we yearn? -30-