One small moment in Putin’s Tucker Carlson interview sparks health speculation

There were many bizarre comments contained within former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin, but one moment which didn’t involve a single spoken word has prompted discussion online about the politician’s health.

As Carlson – who now has his own show on Twitter/X after him and Fox parted ways back in April – picked up on Putin’s criticisms about “competing alliances” between countries, and asked whether he would be able to “re-establish communication” with America if there was a new administration elected later this year, Putin’s left foot could be seen rising upwards before Putin placed a hand on his leg to push it down.

And the incident, captured almost 90 minutes into a two-hour long interview, was spotted by a number of eagle-eyed viewers online:

It’s not the first time there’s been talk over just how well Putin is, either. In February 2018, he cancelled a number of key appearances due to illness which his press secretary Dmitry Peskov said was down to a “cold”.

Two years later, after Russian political pundit Professor Valery Solovei suggested Putin may have symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, Peskov rubbished the unsubstantiated claims as “absolute nonsense”, adding “everything is fine with the president”.

There were then multiple news stories across 2022 about Putin’s health – the same year he decided to give the go-ahead to his illegal invasion of Ukraine.

In April of that year, a video surfaced of the Russian president gripping the end of a table throughout a meeting with his defence minister Sergei Shoigu. Earlier that month, Peskov had denied Putin had had surgery for thyroid cancer, that his health was “excellent”, and that he hadn’t dealt with any illness beyond that of a cold.

There was also another resurfaced video, from February and days before he launched the Ukraine invasion, in which Putin’s right hand and leg tremor uncontrollably as he greets Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, once again raising questions around whether he has Parkinson’s.

Just one month later, clips appeared to show Putin limping and coughing, as well as being the only one wearing a blanket over his legs during a Victory Day parade in mild 9C weather.

Also in May, an unnamed Russian oligarch was reportedly recorded by US magazine New Lines as claiming Putin is “very ill with blood cancer” and had back surgery not long before announcing his invasion of Ukraine.

Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote a dossier on ex-US president Donald Trump and alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, also said that month that “certainly, from what we’re hearing from sources in Russia and elsewhere, is that Putin is, in fact, quite seriously ill.”

And then at the end of May, there was the claim from an FSB officer that Putin has “no more than two to three years to stay alive”, seeing as the Russian president has “a severe form of rapidly progressing cancer’, and added his limbs are “now also shaking uncontrollably”.

The officer told the Sunday Mirror: “We are told he is suffering from headaches and when he appears on TV he needs pieces of paper with everything written in huge letters to read what he’s going to say.

“They are so big each page can only hold a couple of sentences. His eyesight is seriously worsening.”

Comments about headaches arguably gained more weight when, in July 2022, a report from the Russian Telegram channel General SVR made the unverified claim that doctors rushed to Putin’s bedside after suffering “severe nausea” and requiring “urgent medical care”.

CIA chief William Burns dismissed the idea of Putin having cancer or Parkinson’s disease, as did Peskov, who said: “Everything is fine with his health. You know that Ukrainian information specialists, and American and British ones, have been throwing out various fakes about the state of the president’s health in recent months – these are nothing but fakes.”

In November 2022, an ex-British Army chief – Lord Richard Dannatt – referred to Putin’s hands “looking pretty black on top”, which he said is “a sign of injections going in when other parts of the body can’t take injections”.

More recently, shadowy sources were cited in October last year when claims arose that Putin’s security service was alerted to banging in his private bedroom, which led to them finding Putin convulsing on the ground.

Again, Peskov said it was an “absurd hoax”.

All of this has prompted questions around whether Putin has relied on body doubles at any point too, which the Russian president addressed himself in a news conference in December 2023.

“I have decided the only one who looks like me and speaks with my voice should be me,” Putin said.

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