The bizarre allegation was first reported in the French news magazine Paris Match by two veteran investigative journalists. According to the report, members of the Russian president’s Federal Protection Service (FPS) are responsible for collecting his body waste in specialized packages, which are then placed in a special briefcase for the trip home. The FPS is the department in charge of protecting high-ranking government officials, including the president. According to reporters, Regis Gente, author of two books on Russia, and Mikhail Rubin, who has covered Russia for more than a decade, examples of such fecal collections were included during Putin’s visit to France on May 29, 2017 and during the during the October 2019 trip to France. Saudi Arabia. The exercise is said to be aimed at preventing foreign forces from gathering information on the Russian leader’s health. Former BBC journalist Farida Rustamova appeared to confirm the report, writing on Twitter that she was aware of a similar incident in Vienna and that Putin had used “a special private bathroom” and a “porta-potty” in the past. He cited an anonymous source as saying that the president had practiced from the beginning of his leadership. Putin’s health has been a hot topic of speculation and debate in recent months following his decision to invade Ukraine on February 24. More and more unconfirmed reports claim that the 69-year-old is suffering from cancer and that his health is deteriorating rapidly. An FSB official claimed that Putin “did not have more than two to three years to live”, adding that the Russian president had “a serious form of cancer that is rapidly evolving”. Footage of the president in mid-February showed him trembling uncontrollably during a meeting with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko a few days before invading Ukraine, sparking rumors on the internet that he may be suffering from Parkinson’s disease. He was also photographed coughing and squatting under a blanket during the Russia Victory Day parade in May, while another video showed the Russian leader limping. There have been reports in the past of using feces as a means of gathering information. A former Soviet agent has previously claimed that Joseph Stalin was spying on Mao Zedong, among other foreign leaders, while analyzing his feces in a laboratory. In 2016, Igor Atamenko told the BBC that Stalin’s secret police aimed to analyze President Mao by forming psychological profiles of his feces in a top-secret laboratory. Special toilets were reportedly installed for Mao to use when he visited Moscow for 10 days in 1949. The toilets were not connected to sewers, but they collected his waste in secret boxes to be transported to the laboratory and studied for various levels of potassium and amino acids, which are believed to help the psychological profile. In another example, British spies were reportedly sifted through soiled toilet paper used by Soviet troops in East Germany during the Cold War, according to British military expert Tony Geraghty.
