Ukraine’s president has said Vladimir Putin ‘doesn’t have too much time left’ amid questions over the Kremlin leader’s whereabouts as he has not been seen in over a week.
Speaking to Politico during the Munich Security Conference on Friday, just days before the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s invasion, Volodymyr Zelensky said: ‘I’m younger than Putin…He doesn’t have much time, you know.’
While his remarks prompted a laugh from the audience, the Ukrainian president added: ‘No, no, believe me, this is important.’
The 48-year-old also described his rival, 73, as a ‘slave to war’ earlier today as he drew parallels between the current conflict and the 1938 Munich Agreement.
The agreement forced Czechoslovakia to surrender its bordering region with Germany, the Sudetenland to Adolf Hitler – a year before World War II began.
Zelensky’s recent comments come as Putin has mysteriously vanished from the public eye for over a week, with Russian state media broadcasting pre-recorded footage of the Kremlin leader meeting officials in recent days.
The Kremlin leader was last seen by the public delivering a speech on February 5, and it remains unclear what has caused his latest absence.
It is not the first time Putin has disappeared from public view, with the dictator having cultivated a reputation for vanishing for periods of time with no explanation.
Ukraine’s president has stated that Vladimir Putin ‘doesn’t have too much time left’
The Kremlin leader was last seen by the public delivering a speech on February 5
Pictured: Firefighters at the site of a Russian drone strike in Ukraine on February 13
Pictured: Damaged cars in Odesa, Ukraine, after they were hit by a Russian strike
However, such absences have led to speculation of Putin undergoing secret medical treatment.
Zelensky’s statement comes as the United States continues to strive for Russia and Ukraine to end the almost four-year war, with Trump recently setting a June deadline for the two sides to negotiate peace.
On Friday, Trump said Zelensky would miss an opportunity if he doesn’t ‘get moving’, and claimed Russia was willing to end the war through a peace deal.
‘Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelensky’s going to have to get moving. Otherwise, he’s going to miss a great opportunity. He has to move,’ he said.
Between February 17 and 18, a new round of peace negotiations involving Ukraine will be conducted by the US and Russia in Geneva.
The Kremlin has confirmed Vladimir Medinsky, a presidential aide to Vladimir Putin, will lead the Russians.
More recently, Kyiv and its Western allies have accused Moscow of deliberately freezing Ukraine’s population with its attacks on the energy grid.
‘There is not a single power plant left in Ukraine that has not been damaged by Russian attacks,’ Zelensky said. ‘Not one.’
‘But we still generate electricity,’ he added, praising the thousands of workers repairing the plants.
The Ukrainian President appealed once again to his Western allies to deliver air-defence systems to Ukraine more quickly.
Taking a brutal swipe at the Kremlin leader, Zelensky added: ‘He may see himself as a tsar, but in reality he is a slave to war.’
Russia and Ukraine are set to hold US-brokered talks next week, as Zelensky maintains Kyiv is doing ‘everything’ to end the almost four-year war.
It comes as questions over Putin’s health were raised in November when he met with Yekaterina Leshchinskaya, 22, the chair of the Russian Healthy Fatherland movement.
As he reached to shake the woman’s hand, the Russian leader’s right hand was seen with visible bulging veins, prominent tendons, and thin, wrinkled skin.
Pictured: The State Emergency Service of Ukraine on February 13, 2026
Pictured: A house destroyed in a Russian airstrike in Ukraine on February 13
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks at a panel discussion during the 62nd Munich Security Conference (MSC) at the hotel ‘Bayerischer Hof’, in Munich, Germany, 14 February 2026
Footage saw the Russian leader appear to nervously move his fingers and clench them into a fist under his blazer sleeve.
Following the circulation of the clip on X, and later in Polish media, Ukrainian sources suggested that the Russian dictator may be suffering from pain.
Prominent interviewer, and media personality Dmytro Gordon said: ‘Putin clenches his hands into something resembling fists.
‘They look swollen and sore, with veins bulging prominently on one hand.’
Another source said that Putin merely exhibits the normal signs of male ageing which he seeks – through alleged cosmetic surgery – to hide from Russians after more than a quarter of a century in power.
Questions over Putin’s whereabouts come as a group of European countries on Saturday said Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned by the Kremlin.
The foreign ministries of the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said analysis of samples taken from Navalny’s body ‘conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine’ – a neurotoxin found in the skin of dart frogs in South America.
A joint statement said: ‘Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison.’
Putin has mysteriously vanished for more than a week, while Moscow state media has been using pre-recorded footage of the dictator
The five countries said they were reporting Russia to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The announcement came as Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany as the second anniversary of Navalny’s death approaches.
Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died in an Arctic penal colony on February 16, 2024, while serving a 19-year sentence that he believed to be politically motivated.
‘Russia saw Navalny as a threat,’ British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said. ‘By using this form of poison, the Russian state demonstrated the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the overwhelming fear it has of political opposition.’
It comes after five European countries today claimed that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned by Russia. Pictured: Navalny attends a hearing at a court in Moscow in 2017
Navalny pictured with his wife Yulia in 2020
‘Putin killed Alexei with a chemical weapon,’ she wrote on social network X. She said Putin was ‘a murderer’ who ‘must be held accountable’.
Russian authorities said that the politician became ill after a walk and died from natural causes.
Epibatidine is found naturally in dart frogs in the wild, and can also be manufactured in a lab, which European scientists suspect was the case with the substance used on Navalny. It works on the body in a similar way to nerve agents, causing shortness of breath, convulsions, seizures, a slowed heart rate and ultimately death.
Navalny was the target of an earlier poisoning in 2020, with a nerve agent in an attack he blamed on the Kremlin, which always denied involvement. His family and allies fought to have him flown to Germany for treatment and recovery. Five months later, he returned to Russia, where he was immediately arrested and imprisoned for the last three years of his life.
The U.K. has accused Russia of repeatedly flouting international bans on chemical and biological weapons. It accuses the Kremlin of carrying out a 2018 attack in the English city of Salisbury that targeted a former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, with the nerve agent Novichok. Skripal and his daughter became seriously ill, and a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after she came across a discarded bottle with traces of the nerve agent.
The poisoning of Navalny shows ‘that Vladimir Putin is prepared to use biological weapons against his own people to remain in power,’ French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on X.
Yvette Cooper pictured with Navalny’s widow Yulia today during the Munich Security Conference
Yulia Navalnaya, human rights activist and wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, gives a press statement on the death and circumstances of her husband’s death on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Saturday Feb. 14, 2026
Navalny’s widow said last year that two independent labs had found that her husband was poisoned shortly before he died. She has repeatedly blamed Putin for her husband’s death. Russian officials have vehemently denied the accusation.
Yulia Navalnaya said Saturday that she had been ‘certain from the first day’ that her husband had been poisoned, ‘but now there is proof’.
A British inquiry concluded that the attack ‘must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin’.
The Kremlin has denied involvement. Russia also denied poisoning Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent turned Kremlin critic who died in London in 2006 after ingesting the radioactive isotope polonium-210. A British inquiry concluded that two Russian agents killed Litvinenko, and Putin had ‘probably approved’ the operation.
At the Munich Security Conference this weekend, Zelensky also poked fun at Hungarian leader Victor Orban’s belly, saying Ukraine’s fight against Russia allowed Europe to live freely.
Zelensky was describing how Europe gains from having Ukrainian forces battling Russian troops in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s relations with neighbouring Hungary have been strained by Orban’s support for Russia and have deteriorated further in recent weeks as the veteran leader has ramped up attacks on Ukraine ahead of a closely fought parliamentary election in April.
‘There can be a sovereign Moldova and a Romania without dictatorship and even one Victor can think about how to grow his belly, not how to grow his army to stop Russian tanks from returning to the streets of Budapest,’ Zelensky said.
‘But look at the price. Look at the price, look at the pain Ukraine has gone through, look at the suffering Ukraine has faced. It’s Ukrainians who are holding the European front,’ he said.
Although Ukraine applied to join the European Union days after Russia invaded, it has been unable to advance accession talks because of Orban’s vetoes.
Unlike other European countries, Hungary has not diversified its imports from Russia since Moscow’s assault on Ukraine.
