The Kremlin said on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was in good health, dismissing rumours that he is unwell. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters there had been speculation in the West about the president’s health in recent months, but reports he was ill were “nothing but fakes”.

Putin coughed during a public appearance on Wednesday when Interfax news agency quoted him as saying he had caught a slight cold during a visit to Iran the previous day. “It was very hot in Tehran yesterday, plus 38° Celsius and the air conditioning was very strong there. So I apologise,” Putin, 69, was quoted as saying.

International scrutiny of his health has intensified over recent months, including when he was photographed meeting foreign and Russian officials while seated at opposite ends of long tables as a precaution against Covid. At times he has also appeared to walk stiffly. CIA director William Burns was asked about the issue during a security forum in the US on Wednesday, where he said that Putin was “entirely too healthy”.

Russian bet

Putin is making a bet that he can succeed in a war of attrition against the Ukrainian military. Over the rest of the year, Burns said, Putin believes he can “wear down the Ukrainian military” and then strangle the Ukrainian economy. The Russians are slowly moving forward in the grinding war in the Donbas, Burns said. They have, he said, shifted tactics to a “more comfortable way of war”, focusing on destroying Ukrainian targets.

With such an approach, Putin believes that he can wear down both Europe and the US, Burns said. “Putin’s view of Americans is we always suffer from attention deficit disorder and get distracted by something else,” he said at the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado.