Why does dead Putin serve… Putin – what American experts say

For former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Putin is a liar, and the American journalist who interviewed him is an idiot. But for many, the conclusions slip away: Putin did not speak in the interview, because he died. But who does Putin's corpse in the “freezer” serve?

After the Russian president spoke to the American journalist on Thursday, February 8, Russian political scientist Valery Solovey, who has half a million followers online, claimed that the interview was conducted to make it appear that Putin is alive, when in fact he is. The refrigerator is dead (!).

Valery Dmitrievich Solovey (64 years old), a Russian political scientist, historian and former head of the Department of Public Relations at the Moscow Institute of International Relations, resigned from the university on June 19, 2019.

So he claims that Vladimir Putin died last year, and today he is publicly “represented” by one of his henchmen, who is completely controlled by the Kremlin elite. “Putin is dead. He is dead irretrievably. He will not be revived. He will remain in the refrigerator at home,” Solloway said on the program earlier this week.

“It's about making everything amazing,” said Eric Green, a former Russian adviser to Joe Biden.

His death was kept secret by Putin's longtime protégé, Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia's Security Council, with doctors kept locked in a room in the house, and only allowed out if they signed non-disclosure agreements, according to reports, Telegram reported. Solway.

As mentioned before The Wall Street JournalJournalist Carlson declined to comment, nor did the Kremlin, which often denies what Solloway reported.

Solovey's message is part of a widespread online rumor about Putin's health, which has of course worsened since the no-deal between Russia and the West.

Solloway's alleged comments about Putin's deteriorating health sparked Western tabloids and angered senior officials. The rumors were so outrageous that CIA Director William Burns came out of his pants in 2022 and officially declared Putin “perfectly sane.”

But it should be noted that even the head of Ukrainian intelligence, Kirill Budanov, claimed that Putin was sick and that he was represented by 3 of his followers who are undergoing constant training and surgical operations to become like Putin.

There seem to be two possible scenarios, without excluding anything else: for some, Solovey is a fool, and for others, what he says may serve the Kremlin itself.

Impostor scenario

As Solloway said, he was forced to leave his job at MGIMO in 2019 because of his political views.

Soloway turned to YouTube to deal with the matter after he was expelled from the academy in 2019. The number of his YouTube subscribers increased to more than half a million last year, after allegations of Putin's death.

In 2022, Russian security services raided his home and he was declared a foreign agent. However, he was allowed to continue raising money through cryptocurrencies, which he advertises in each of his YouTube episodes.

Kremlin tool

But according to some American analysts, former advisors to American presidents, cited by the American newspaper, Solloway is playing the Kremlin's game in different ways.

According to Thomas Graham, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, speculation about Putin's impending death could take pressure off anyone in Russia or the West considering how to oppose Putin or his invasion of the country. Ukraine. “What's the point of worrying if Putin is going to die anyway?” Graham said.

What Solloway claims may also serve the Kremlin in another way, which, according to the American publication, is spreading a series of disinformation that makes any news appear questionable.

“It's about making everything amazing,” said Eric Green, a former Russian adviser to Joe Biden. Green said Solloway may lose credibility one day when he is forced to admit that Putin is alive, but gaining so much influence would do so much more damage to the media's overall image “that everyone loses.” Of course, Solloway categorically denies that the Kremlin supports him.

Dead Putin serves the Kremlin

Graham said commentators like Solovey have enormous influence in the West because of the lack of information about what is happening in Russia now with embassies short-staffed and news organizations closing their offices.

But the rumors spread by Solovi and the Telegram channel also serve a purpose in Russia. If a real coup were to occur in Russia, there would be some doubt about its validity, according to Graham.

Solloway also began predicting other events, some of which the West and Putin's critics would like to hear.

He predicted social unrest in Russia, and said in 2017 that Putin would step down within two to three years. In 2018, he said that a major crisis would take him out in 2019. In 2019, he said that Putin would leave office in 2020. In 2020, he said that Putin had Parkinson's disease and would leave office in 2021.

What do Western experts think about Solway?

According to Graham, Solloway's predictions help reinforce the Kremlin's broader strategy of hitting the Russian people with plots to make them politically inactive. Graham, who still travels to Russia to maintain contacts with officials there, said Solovey is considered an “inside joke” in Moscow.

But the fact that he predicted a Kremlin reshuffle in 2016, which promoted Anton Vaino to Kremlin chief of staff, suggested to Western experts that he understood some of the government's inner workings.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Soloway insisted that his sources are “very influential people” who have told him over the years that Putin suffers from a number of ailments, including Parkinson’s disease, cancer and schizophrenia.

Having made a series of calls with Solloway himself in Moscow, Graham reported that in their last meeting in 2019, he said that Solloway had abandoned his previous expectations of a local uprising, and that Putin was now so ill that he had been rushing to plan before. “Artificial pogroms” against Russians in the Baltics that would justify an invasion of Russia that would break NATO. Of course, there are somewhat similar assessments and assumptions being made by well-paid research institutions in the United States, which encourages conflict.

“The scheme for Solloway’s invention is likely to be based on elements of real military contingency planning, educated guesswork, and feverish imagination,” Graham wrote in a report to his American colleagues.

“The reader can decide what's what. The chances of this scenario happening are nil, but I'm relaying this in the hope that if it miraculously does happen, you won't be able to say you weren't warned.”

However, no matter what the experts, Solovey or Budanov, say, how much training and intellectual capacity should a sycophant – spitting on Putin – be able to handle for more than two hours on such important issues.