Sick Putin could be incapacitated within months and then toppled as leader, Western spy claims – Yahoo News

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting on economic issues on Wednesday. (Getty)

Western intelligence officials believe Vladimir Putin could become medically incapacitated "within three-six months", a former spy has claimed.

Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele said the CIA and other agencies believe the Russian President could be ousted in the coming months following his disastrous invasion of Ukraine.

He claimed that while one of the factors would be his failing health, it would also depend on what happened in Ukraine and if Russia suffered more substantial casualties.

Steele told BBC Radio 4s The World at One: I dont see him (Putin) being in power for more than three-six months from now.

Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. (Getty)

There are signs his health is failing for a start which will be a factor in this.

And if what were being told by the CIA and others and our own sources is true then it looks as though he could become incapacitated over that sort of period of time.

Steele added: This is a strongman regime where people have to have fear of the leader and if the leader is incapacitated medically then there will be a move against him, im sure.

Watch: Volodymyr Zelensky claims 31,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine

The former MI6 operative said his replacement was unlikely to be any more liberal than Putin, but would be someone who had a vested interest in getting out of the war.

He said: I dont think it would mean good relations with the West but at least we would be able to have a negotiation where they could claim they hadnt lost face because of the blame they would be putting on the previous leader.

In April, questions about Putin's health increased when a video from February showed him shaking uncontrollably during a meeting with Aleksandr Lukashenko, the president of Belarus.

That followed a report by a Russian investigative journalism group that Putin had been visited by a cancer surgeon dozens of times over a four-year period.

Last month a Ukrainian intelligence official claimed the Russian leader had cancer but won't "die tomorrow".

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Moscow has not formally responded to rumours about Putin's health. However, in November 2020, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected widely reported claims that the Russian president had Parkinson's disease and was poised to quit.

Its absolute nonsense, Peskov said. Everything is fine with the president.

It was reported last month that Putin was able to survive an assassination attempt two months ago, though Western officials are reportedly skeptical of the claim.

Read more: Russia draws closer to capture of Ukraine's Donbas region

Ukrainian soldiers walk as seeds burn in grain silos shelled repeatedly in the Donetsk region. (Reuters)

More than three months after launching a war against its heavily outnumbered and outgunned neighbour, Russia has withdrawn from much of northern Ukraine to refocus on the east.

Thousands of people have been killed in Ukraine and millions more displaced since the beginning of the war, which Moscow calls a "special military operation" to "denazify" its neighbour.

Ukraine and its Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war to seize territory.

Steele was behind the so-called Steele dossier, published by BuzzFeed in January 2017, about alleged links between former US president Donald Trump and Russia in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election campaign.

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Sick Putin could be incapacitated within months and then toppled as leader, Western spy claims - Yahoo News