Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin says Vladimir Zhirinovsky is alive, contradicting a report in local media that the 75-year-old firebrand politician had died.
Volodin was quoted by the state TASS news agency on March 25 as saying Zhirinovsky was in serious condition at a Moscow hospital, where he has been since early February after testing positive for COVID-19 and developing pneumonia.
"Zhirinovsky's condition is assessed as stable, doctors continue to provide all possible medical assistance in this situation," Russia's Ministry of Health added in a statement.
Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party also denied the report, saying it "categorically refuted" the "false" report.
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Volodin's comments came minutes after the RIA Novosti state news agency quoted Senator Aleksandr Pronyushkin as saying in a post on Telegram that Zhirinovsky, whose political rise in the early 1990s frightened the West and underscored the fragility of democracy in the immediate post-Soviet period, had died at 10:45 a.m. local time after being in a coma the previous 24 hours.
Pronyushkin later deleted the Telegram post.