Ever since 2013, I’ve been hearing that Vladimir Putin is going to die any day. Is Volodymyr Zelensky now trying to spin the same line? At a press conference this week, the Ukrainian President said of Putin, ‘He will die soon – that’s a fact – and it will all be over’, adding ‘I’m younger than Putin, so put your bets on me. My prospects are better.’
Admittedly, in actuarial terms, the 47-year-old Zelensky is likely to outlive the 72-year-old Russian leader. However, while the average life expectancy of someone born in the USSR in 1952, like Putin, is just 57, his grandfather Spirodon lived to the age of 86 and his father Vladimir Spirodonovich to 88. More to the point, Putin is cradled in the careful grip of the best medical care Russian science and Russian money can provide (and the best personal protection multiple Russian security services can provide, too).
These rumours, then, are driven by a mix of helplessness and hope
This might just have been Zelensky having a little fun at a sombre moment, highlighting the contrast between himself and the ‘grandpa in his bunker’ (as the now-dead opposition leader Alexei Navalny dubbed him).
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