Well, it looks like the rumors were true. Vladimir Putin really is sick.

We’ve been discussing for a while whether he has been suffering from some cognitive decline as a result of some sort of illness and now it looks like we have our answer.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has cancer apparently and will be handing over control of the country to one of his trusted cronies, Nikolai Patrushev.

Patrushev is the head of the Russian federal police’s Security Council. Putin will be putting him in charge while he goes under the knife to have the surgery to remove his cancer.

This report isn’t fully confirmed, but according to a video that is supposedly run by a former Russian Foreign Intelligence Service lieutenant general, it’s the truth.

“Putin is unlikely to agree to hand over power for a longer period of time,” the narrator of the video states, adding that the control of the country will likely be in Patrushev’s hands for no more than two to three days.

“I will say that this is the worst option,” the narrator adds. “Patrushev is an outright villain. He is no better than Vladimir Putin. Moreover, he is a more cunning, and I would say, more insidious person than Vladimir Putin. If he comes to power, Russians’ problems will only multiply.”

“Viktor Mikhailovich” ominously hinted that he and his allies “will make certain efforts so this does not happen, and I hope we will succeed.”

So, this just leads us to further suspicion about one of our theories of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Maybe this was his one last hurrah in case he didn’t make it through the surgery or in case he died from the cancer too soon. Maybe he wanted to go down in history as the one who tried to bring the sheep (Ukraine) back into the fold.