Vladimir Putin celebrates birthday as he hopes to become Russia’s longest leader

President Vladimir Putin turned 72 on Monday, with birthday wishes coming from his followers.

The celebrations in Moscow come amid ongoing claims that the Russian leader is suffering with poor health, the Kremlin was previously forced to deny that Putin was ill, after reports surfaced that he might be suffering from a form of cancer.

“God save the Tsar!” was one of the first public birthday wishes for Putin, who has been Russia’s paramount leader for nearly quarter of a century.

The greeting came from ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin on his Telegram messaging channel minutes after midnight.

Dugin, 62, has long advocated the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories in a vast new Russian empire, which he wants to include Ukraine, where Russia has been waging a war. Dugin’s daughter was killed in a suspected car bomb in 2022.

Putin, who ordered his troops to invade Ukraine in 2022, won a record post-Soviet landslide in a March election. His new six-year term, if completed, would make him Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years when tsars and empresses ruled the country.

In March 2022, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, told reporters on Outin’s health: “Some people say he has cancer and some people say he has brain-fog from Covid. Other people just think he’s a complete raging bully.”

Earlier this month it was reported that Russian scientists are working on new anti-ageing treatments on the orders of a close aide of Putin, who is reportedly consumed by the idea of eternal life.

Research institutes have been ordered to report on efforts to combat cellular ageing and osteoporosis, cognitive and sensory disorders and to boost immune systems.

3D bioprinting, a technology which scientists hope will enable organs and tissue to be ‘printed’, is also a keen interest of the health ministry.

A Kremlin source told The Times that Mikhail Kovalchuk, 77, who has reportedly been pushing forward the anti-ageing research, is “crazy about eternal life”.

Putin portrays the war in Ukraine as part of a centuries-old battle with a declining West which he says humiliated Russia after the Cold War by encroaching on Moscow’s sphere of influence.

Kyiv and its Western allies call the war an imperialistic land grab. The conflict has killed thousands of civilians, the vast majority of them Ukrainians. It has turned cities into rubble and displaced millions.

“Today, friends, is the birthday of our national leader,” Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechen Republic who calls himself Putin‘s “foot soldier,” wrote in a congratulatory message on Telegram at midnight on Monday.

“This is a significant day for our entire Fatherland.”

Meanwhile, on Monday, a fire broke out at an oil depot in the city of Feodosia on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea, Russian-appointed officials in the Crimean Peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014 said on Monday.

There were no casualties, Oleg Kryuchkov, an adviser to the Russian-installed head of Crimea, wrote on the Telegram messaging app, citing the head of the Feodosia administration.

There was no detail provided on what had caused the fire. The Baza Telegram news channel, which has sources among Russia’s security services, reported that several fuel tanks were on fire in Feodosia after residents heard a series of loud explosions.