Russian President Vladimir Putin has cancer, and the Russian army's chief of staff will use this to sabotage the war while Putin undergoes therapy, according to one of the documents from the Pentagon leak, The Independent reported on Friday.
Regarding an offensive strategy discussed in the document, The Independent quotes the paper saying that “according to [redacted source], the plan for “the offensive” (no further information) was suspected to be a strategy devised to sabotage Putin.”
While the source's name is redacted, the document went on to say that they quoted an anonymous Russian source with ties to the Kremlin.
Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov reportedly concocted the plan together with Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev as a way to purposely lose and end the war with Ukraine while Putin was "unable to influence the war effort" because of his treatment.
There have been rumors of Putin's cancer in the past
Rumors that Putin has cancer and is undergoing treatment have been going around since long before the documents were leaked. Reports months ago claimed that Putin was battling the disease. The reports pointed to a couple of months last year when Putin was seemingly out of the public eye and claimed that during that time, he was undergoing treatment.
According to Sky News, information leaked from Russia claimed that the Russian president was battling Parkinson's disease last November and would not have been able to continue in his role if not for foreign treatment.
The rumors preceded these reports even and began a few years ago when Russian media reported that the Russian president traveled with a team of doctors at all times between 2016 and 2017.
Putin's health has also come into question at times after people noticed his leg shaking in a video of him speaking and other such events. There has also been speculation that he sends lookalikes to go to places instead of him like when he visited Mariupol a few weeks ago.
Neither Putin nor the Kremlin has confirmed any reports of the president suffering from any diseases including cancer and Parkinson's disease.
The Russia-Ukraine war was a central topic of many of the Pentagon documents that were leaked last week. The topics range from data on the war to information on international aid to Ukraine including one paper that outlined scenarios in which Israel may send military aid to Ukraine.