Firebrand politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) , has been hospitalized with COVID-19 and is in serious condition, according to Russian media reports.
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Several news agencies in Russia on February 9 quoted sources close to parliament and the LDPR party as saying that the 75-year-old politician's lungs had suffered "serious" damage from the coronavirus. The reports could not be independently verified.
Zhirinovsky has not been seen in public for weeks and Vasily Vlasov, a deputy chairman of the LDPR faction in parliament's lower chamber, the State Duma, told Interfax that the party leader was "doing paperwork." He did not reveal Zhirinovsky's current whereabouts.
The Kazakhstan-born Zhirinovsky is known for his nationalist, and often outlandish rhetoric.
In one of his latest public statements, he suggested on national television in late December that the Russian military bomb Ukraine on New Year's Eve.
In the 1990s he advocated using nuclear weapons against the Russian North Caucasus republic of Chechnya at the start of the Second Chechen War.
He has also called for forcibly retaking Alaska from the United States and for restoring Moscow's control of former Soviet states and the incorporation of Kazakhstan into Russia.
Russian health authorities reported 183,103 new coronavirus infections on February 9, a new daily record as the highly contagious omicron variant continued to spread.
SEE ALSO: Russia's Daily COVID-19 Infection Rate Hits Record AgainExperts chalk the longevity and severity of Russia's coronavirus epidemic up to widespread vaccine hesitancy.
Fewer than half of eligible Russians have been fully vaccinated, according to official figures, and the uptake for Russia's three freely available COVID-19 shots remains low, even as most people eschew masks or other precautions against the virus.