Putin's Eventual Death Won't Bring Change in Russia: Kyiv Official

Unproven rumors have spread online in recent days that Russian President Vladimir Putin died. While the Kremlin says its leader is very much alive, a top Kyiv official feels that when Putin does eventually pass, little will change in Russia.

"If someone thinks that [Putin's death] will end everything, we don't think so. The territory that is modern Russia is saturated with inhumanity," Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of national security and defense council of Ukraine, said in a Friday interview with Ukrainian magazine Focus.

The Kremlin this week denied rumors about Putin's death after a Telegram channel claimed he had suffered cardiac arrest. The rumor had quickly spread around social media, and media outlets soon covered the false claim being debunked as news.

People have long speculated about Putin's health, and onlookers have looked for clues from his public appearances—such as shaky hands or a bloated complexion—to speculate the president has a condition like Parkinson's disease. In July 2022, three intelligence leaders told Newsweek that a classified U.S. report said Putin had undergone treatment in April 2022 for advanced cancer.

According to an English translation of Danilov's Focus interview by the outlet Ukrainska Pravda, Danilov said most of the world hopes the 71-year-old Russian strongman dies soon.

"Sooner or later, everyone passes on to the other side. And so will Putin. The overwhelming majority of our population, perhaps 99.9 percent, wants this to happen as soon as possible," Danilov said.

"As for his health, this man was not in his right mind when he made the decision to invade a country that they claimed was a sibling," he continued. "You have to be crazy to deal with issues like that. Therefore, in terms of his health, he was never in good health."

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email for comment Friday night.

As for why Danilov doesn't think Putin's death will bring about change in Russia, he said the Russian people "have been taught since childhood that they should hate everyone in the world. And if everything is wrong inside the country, someone must be responsible for it."

The Ukrainian defense official cited Russia's brief invasion of Georgia in 2008 as an example of what he was talking about.

"At that time, 80-85 percent of Russians had a negative attitude towards Georgians. What did Georgians do to Russians to deserve their hatred? As for Ukraine, they hate us just as much and believe we should disappear from the world map," he said, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

Danilov added, "If anyone thinks that anything will change after Putin's death, it won't. It will take years to see changes. First and foremost, they have to start loving people."

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