Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met his Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel on Tuesday, was shuffling his feet and appeared a bit shaky and unstable during the meeting. The video footage that surfaced online shows that Putin’s hands turned purple as he clutched the arm of the chair. He was also seen moving his legs uncomfortably.
Rumours about the Russian leader’s health have been doing the rounds for months, following the reports of him receiving cancer treatment. During Tuesday's summit with Miguel Diaz-Canel, Putin, 70, was pictured sitting awkwardly in his chair as the pair spoke in front of the cameras.
His left hand was wrapped tightly around his chair's arm, and his right hand fiddled aimlessly with something on his lap. After months of quarantine during the Covid-19 pandemic, Putin has shown signs of declining mental and physical health in multiple appearances after the start of the war in Ukraine.
Earlier this month, photos showing strange marks and black colour on Putin's hands created a buzz on social media. Putin and Miguel Diaz-Canel presented a united front against their common "enemy" Washington as they slammed Western sanctions.
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Earlier, Putin did not attend in person the summit of leaders from the Group of 20 nations (G20) in Bal and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov represented Putin at the G20 Summit. Meanwhile, Indonesia had invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the summit as a guest. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine will not attend the G20 summit if Putin participates in the meeting.
Earlier In October, Putin lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's independent foreign policy, saying that a lot has been done under his leadership in India as he called him a patriot of the country, according to a Reuters translation of Putin's statement which he said in Russian.