14th April, 2022
Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu has suffered a heart attack and is now being rehabilitated in an intensive care unit.
Foul play is suspected, according to a Daily Mail report attributed to a Russian-Israeli businessman, Leonid Nevzlin.
Nevzlin, a former media mogul and top oil executive, is one of several Russian businessmen forced to flee when they were targeted by the Kremlin in 2003, after Putin decided to seize the Yukos oil company.
He was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment in 2008 as the Kremlin persecuted Yukos’ top executives, and last month announced he was renouncing his Russian passport and declared ‘everything Putin touches dies’.
Shoigu, who Nevzlin said is bedridden has been Putin’s right hand man and leader of the Russian army for a decade.
He was a mainstay in the early weeks of the war in Ukraine but recently disappeared from regular Kremlin briefings.
There were suspicions of tensions between Putin and Shoigu in late March over the invasion’s slow progress, with US intelligence suggesting the pair fell out when Putin learned of the extent of Russian losses in Ukraine.
But Shoigu, 66, is now said to be in intensive care after suffering ‘a massive heart attack’ which ‘could not have occurred due to natural causes’, according to Nevzlin.
His story suggests Putin’s longtime ally may have been the subject of an assassination attempt ordered by his boss.
Shoigu was last seen on yesterday on a video conference with Putin and other ministers about the development of the Arctic but did not speak, and there is speculation the Kremlin is using previously recorded footage of Shoigu since his withdrawal from public appearances weeks ago.
Citing sources in Moscow, Nevzlin today declared: ‘Shoigu is out of the game, and may be disabled if he survives.
‘Rumor has it that a heart attack could have occurred not due to natural causes.’
He went on to say that 20 Russian generals have been arrested in Russia and charged with embezzling up to 10 billion dollars allocated to the war effort in Ukraine.
Nevzlin alleged that ‘all the headquarters’ had been arrested and had been siphoning funds destined to prop up Ukraine’s ‘Russian liberators’ since 2014, after the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of conflict in the Donbas.
‘Everything is clear here – the total embezzlement of funds for the preparation of [taking over the leadership of Ukraine]. Since 2014, about $10 billion (USD) allocated by Putin for the preparation of the blitzkrieg has been stolen.’
If the exiled businessman’s claims prove to be true, it would confirm suspicions of a major disconnect between Putin and the highest ranking members of Russia’s army and security services.