CIA Director: Putin 'Entirely Too Healthy'

There's no intelligence indicating Russian President Vladimir Putin is in bad health, CIA Director William Burns said Wednesday.

Burns, while speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, said that Putin was "entirely too healthy."

"There are lots of rumors about President Putin's health, and as far as we can tell, he's entirely too healthy," Burns said, BBC reported.

Reports in recent months have said that Putin suffered health issues that could affect his position as Russia's leader.

Newsweek last month reported that a classified U.S. intelligence report said Putin underwent treatment in April for advanced cancer.

Burns' comment, however, seemed to align with U.K. Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin saying Sunday that talk of failing health or an assassination of Putin amid his war with Ukraine is merely "wishful thinking."

The CIA director, a former career diplomat who did two tours in Moscow, added that his comment was "not a formal intelligence judgment," Politico reported.

Putin will turn 70 on Oct. 7.

"In recent months, Ukrainian, American, and British so-called information 'specialists' have thrown around various fakes about the health of the president. But it is nothing but fakes," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday, the BBC reported.

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