A limousine belonging to Vladimir Putin has exploded in Moscow, Russia, heaping on the paranoia for the dictator.
Putin’s £275,000 Aurus Senat burst into a roaring blaze on a street just north of Moscow’s FSB secret service Lubyanka headquarters. The car is believed to be owned by Putin’s Presidential Property Management Department, with reports not yet revealing who was using the car when the shocking incident occurred.
The 72-year-old dictator routinely uses Russian-made cars and has at times gifted limousines to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Reports say those in the car weren’t injured. Separately, footage showed servicemen from a ceremonial guard in Murmansk being individually body searched by a Federal Protection Service [FSO] officer for hidden weapons or explosive devices as they stood waiting for the Kremlin dictator to lay a wreath by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
According to reports, magazines were removed from their guns and plugs fitted into the chambers amid acute fears that Putin may be in danger of assassination from his own troops, with every member of the Russian’s honour guard searched.
Putin recently boarded nuclear submarine Arkhangelsk to declare: “Not long ago I said we’d grind them [Ukraine] down — now it looks like we’ll finish them off.”
Earlier this week there was another sign of the deep concern for Putin’s security amid the unpopular war with Ukraine.
FSO officers were seen opening sewer hatches in a hunt for bombs close to a Moscow venue where Putin was speaking.
Earlier this week Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently predicted Putin “will die soon, and that’s a fact”.
In 2022, the Kremlin found itself in the position of having to control rumours that Putin had an accident after falling down a flight of stairs, supposedly losing control of his bowels “involuntarily” due to “cancer affecting his stomach and bowels.
Putin’s recent public appearances and meetings at the Kremlin have fuelled rampant speculation about his declining health.