Vladimir Putin ‘dodges’ death after losing control of motorbike | World | News

Vladimir Putin has claimed he had a lucky escape after losing control of a motorbike. The 72-year-old Russian tyrant revealed his close brush with death to his Defence Minister Andrey Belousov.

He told Belousov that he had “dodged” death, but failed to say when and where the incident occurred. “I once got on a motorcycle, revved it,” he confided to the Kremlin technocrat and apparatchik. “And it went into a spin and flipped over. I just dodged it at the last second. It fell right next to me.”

Putin spoke to Belousov last week at the culmination of anti-Western war games involving Russia and Belarus.

The Russian President has carefully sought to burnish his macho credentials in a bid to impress the public. He has made public appearances with bikers from the Night Wolves motorcycle club, a far-right group that supports the Kremlin.

And he was photographed riding a Russian-made Ural motorcycle with a sidecar in 2019. Putin has also been snapped shirtless several times – once when riding a horse and on another occasion during a hunting expedition in southern Siberia.

Other images released in the past show Putin sunbathing topless, swimming with dolphins and riding a submersible near Gotland island in the Baltic Sea.

Overnight on Saturday, Russia launched another massive attack on Ukraine, targeting civilians.

The Kremlin’s army launched 619 drones and 40 cruise and ballistic missiles in an intense bombardment.

Ukraine‘s President Zelensky regions across the country were targeted as part of a “deliberate strategy” to “intimidate civilians and destroy our infrastructure”.

Video footage shared on social media showed the horrifying moment a Russian missile hit a residential area in Dnipro.