Does Putin Have Cancer?

For most of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s time in office, he has successfully cultivated a public image as a healthy, virile leader. However, his recent public appearances have been followed by claims of ill-health. Since these public appearances, rumors of Putin’s ill-health have surfaced, with overlapping claims of Parkinson's disease, major back problems, and various cancers. However, the most substantial claim to date, and the one that has most alleged pieces of evidence, is of thyroid cancer. Other specific cancers such as blood or bowel cancer have also been claimed over the years by various sources, but without enough substantial alleged evidence for Rootclaim to assess them separately, so they will be assessed together. There is, of course, the possibility that Putin has an as-of-yet undiagnosed cancer which, naturally, he is not receiving treatment for - this possibility is included in the 'no cancer' hypothesis. The destabilising effect of an incapacitated, seriously-ill, or deceased Russian President, on Russia and on the world as a whole, is serious. Given the lack of clear cut evidence, a probabilistic unbiased analysis of all available evidence could provide some much needed clarity. Note: Independent Russian media outlet, Proekt, released an analysis on 1st April 2022 which is the most comprehensive compilation of the various claims made about Putin’s health to date. It is also the source of the strongest piece of alleged evidence to date for Putin’s ill health: a list of doctors’ visits to Sochi, claimed to coincide with Putin’s visits. Rootclaim approached Proekt in private correspondence and publicly on Twitter for access to their full dataset, but Proekt did not respond. This analysis is our best assessment of the evidence given the access to the information that we currently have. From a search of the limited database available, for now, that means Rootclaim can verify less than 50% of the total days Proekt claims the doctors were in Sochi. For this reason Rootclaim considers it likely, but not certain, that the specific doctors’ visits mentioned in the Proekt analysis have been cherry-picked. If, in the future, Rootclaim can corroborate more of the doctor visits, or rule out cherry-picking through verifying Proekt’s data, the results of this analysis may change.`