Russian ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky is dead, the Duma spokesman announced. As of March 25, there have been various speculations about the health of the founder of the Russian Liberal Democratic Party, which despite the name is a political force in the farright Russian parliament. Some independent Russian media had already pronounced Zhirinovsky dead at the end of March, linking the death to worsening Covid. However, the news was denied by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who defined it as “indecent” for someone to spread false news about an ally of Vladimir Putin. Extremely hardline antiWesterner, 75 years old, Zhirinovsky was in the Russian parliament for 30 years after rising politically in the 1990s. At the end of February, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a video of Zhirinovsky became popular. In a speech to the Duma in December 2021, he had predicted the day and time of the invasion of Ukraine with particular accuracy: 4 a.m. on February 22 ‘ he said while railing against NATO. The invasion would take place two days after the expected date.
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