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.
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.