A collection of weird reports are making people question what is actually going on with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio sent a cryptic tweet Feb. 25 in which he wrote, “I wish I could share more, but for now I can say it’s pretty obvious to many that something is off with #Putin.” Given Rubio’s seat in the Senate Intelligence Committee, it’s possible he’s privy to classified information regarding Putin’s health and wellbeing in the wake of his invasion of Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron met with Putin in early February, telling sources that he was struck at how different the Russian president was compared to when he met him during the summer of 2021, according to Reuters.
“[Putin] gave [Macron] five hours of historical revisionism,” said the source, who further described how Putin believes that the West had broken commitments to Russia since the late 1990s, including the growth of NATO to include former Soviet Union states, Reuters reported.
“So he goes on for hours rewriting history from 1997 on. He drowns you in these long monologues,” said the source, noting that Macron kept trying to go back to the issue of that present moment: whether Putin was going to invade Ukraine. Russia had amassed more than 100,000 troops along the border around that time. Reuters described Putin’s behavior as “hawkish” and reported that Putin feels the 2019 election of Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a coup and that Zelenskyy is controlled by the U.S.
Even Putin’s own Kremlin comrades have allegedly told sources that “everyone is fucking stunned” by Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, as reported in Russia by Arehtctbo. “It is impossible for officials to resign, since this would be a betrayal. You can only resign right to jail.” Senior officials weren’t informed that this war would be a full-scale invasion, the reporters alleged.
“Everyone is fucking stunned,” says one source close to the Kremlin. Another source says no one in the presidential administration expected a full-scale war—or the sanctions. “You can’t resign,” said first source. “You can only resign right to jail.”
WOW.https://t.co/uhnrthdhSf— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) March 3, 2022
Putin’s history of thuggish behavior is well documented in books like “The Man Without a Face” by Masha Gessen, but he has been careful to keep his hands publicly clean. One of his top political opponents, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was poisoned in May 2015. (RELATED: Is Putin Crazy? Russian President Rumored To Be Exhibiting Paranoia, Erratic Behavior: REPORT)
Almost ten years earlier, Alexander V. Litvinenko, another Putin opponent, died of polonium-210 poisoning in London, The New York Times reported. While it is difficult to trace a poisoning back to a specific individual and Russian government officials denied any wrongdoing, several experts and observers were suspicious that Kremlin officials were involved.
When asked about the attempted assassination of another opponent, Alexei Navalny, with a nerve agent, Putin denied any involvement, according to the BBC. He also seemed to laugh at the implication in a video posted by Al Jazeera. (RELATED: ‘Obviously Insane Czar’: Navalny Urges Russians To Protest Ukraine Invasion Every Day)
Author Paul Kengor released a story detailing the experiences of a consultant with high-level security clearance who attended a 2014 meeting with Russian officials in Moscow. He was allegedly asked a number of times about then-President Barack Obama having such a “wimpy and unmanly dog,” Bo. The consultant originally couldn’t understand why the officials were so obsessed with Bo. Putin then entered the meeting and insisted that the consultant follow him to a set of kennels containing 10 of the “fiercest looking canines,” Kengor wrote.
“This is what a real dog looks like. Tell your president,” Putin allegedly told the consultant. The Russian president then left and the meeting went ahead as planned. Kengor noted that Putin brought said dogs to intimidate German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2007, which allegedly worked. (RELATED: KOFFLER: Biden Got Bullied At The Putin Summit)
Kengor told these stories to late Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official Herb Meyer. Meyer informed Kengor that the CIA employed psychiatrists to analyze the mental stability of America’s adversaries. “I’ve thought for some time that Putin was becoming, um, untethered from reality. This [dog] story provides some evidence to support that view. Obviously, a crazy bastard is more dangerous.”
Putin biographer, Mark Galeotti, told Good Morning Britain in February that, “in the past, [Putin] was very cautious and risk-adverse. Now what we see very much is an old man in a hurry.” When asked if Putin is actually a mad man, Galeotti described how just before the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of people in Putin’s inner-circle declined in numbers.
During the pandemic, Putin went into a “bio-security” bubble. The only people with access to him were the “ultra” authoritarian, the ones who may have talked an arguably once-somewhat rational Putin into an irrational mindset where he’s thinking more about his legacy than his actions, Galeotti continued.
“Sadly, we are treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again,” former senior director for Europe and Russia at the United States Security Council, Fiona Hill, told Politico. “Putin is increasingly operating emotionally.”
Others have hypothesized that Putin’s newly puffy face is a sign of steroid abuse, forcing the authoritarian into “roid-rage.” Whatever is going on, Putin has seemingly gone from weird to downright insane.