Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu suffered a heart attack that Russian-Israeli oligarch Leonid Nevzlin suggested could be a result of foul play.
Shoigu, 66, has served as Russian President Vladimir Putin's right-hand man and has led the Russian army for a decade. He led the army in the early weeks of the war against Ukraine, but has disappeared from recent Kremlin briefings amid suspicions of growing tensions with Putin in late March over the invasion's slow progress.
He was seen on Monday at a video conference with Putin and other ministers, but he did not speak. It is believed that the Kremlin used previously recorded footage of the defense minister. Intelligence reports from the U.S. also suggested that Putin and Shoigu had a falling out after the defense minister and his subordinates sugar-coated reports of the war.
It is now believed that Shoigu is in intensive care after a massive heart attack as a result of an assassination attempt by Putin, Nevzlin said in a Facebook post.
Nevzlin wrote that Shoigu is out of the game and may be disabled if he survives. The rumor has it that a heart attack could have occurred not due to natural causes. At least 20 Russian generals have been imprisoned over allegedly embezzling up to $10 billion that was supposed to be allocated for the invasion effort in Ukraine, according to Nevzlin.
The total embezzlement of funds for the preparation of taking over the leadership of Ukraine Since 2014, about $10 billion USD allocated by Putin has been stolen, Nevzlin said.
Nevzlin served as the director of Russia's Centers for Scientific and Technical Creativity in the late 1980s. He became the president of the Menatep Bank in 1989, just two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Nevzlin went on to run a Russian news agency and became the vice president of the board of directors of the Yukos oil company. He fled to Israel in 2003 when the Kremlin expropriated Yukos.
Nevzlin became one of Putin's leading critics after he was sentenced in 2008 to life imprisonment charges. He has denied all charges and accused the Russian president of silencing him and other critics.
Nevzlin announced last month that he would give up his Russian passport in a show of support for Ukraine during the war.
In a Facebook post, Nevzlin wrote that everything that Putin touches dies. I am against the occupation.