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By Isabel van Brugen
News Reporter
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A late-night trip by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin on Wednesday has sparked a wave of conspiracy theories.
Among the unsubstantiated claims spread on Twitter was that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had suffered a heart attack after meeting with a Russian official and that he was critically ill in the hospital.
Twitter users, including Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, shared a 5-second clip that allegedly shows the Russian president being rushed to the Kremlin in Moscow.
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"Putin rushed to the Kremlin around 10 minutes ago. Rumour has it it's related to Erdogan's health; I doubt that though," tweeted Twitter account War Mapper, which provides daily map updates of the Ukraine war.
Turkey's government quickly rejected the claims as "baseless" on Twitter.
On Tuesday, Erdogan fell ill during a live television interview. The following day he said that he would take some time off to "rest at home under the advice of our doctors," and canceled his public appearances on Wednesday and Thursday.
The Turkish president had been due to make an in-person address on Thursday to inaugurate Turkey's first nuclear power station in Mersin, on its southern coast, which was built by Russia's state nuclear energy company Rosatom.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday that Erdogan and Putin will be participating virtually. He also said that Russia wasn't aware of Erdogan's reported health issues.
"We know nothing about these 'problems,'" he said at a news briefing.
Newsweek reached out to Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment.
Russia's state-run news agency Tass reported that the pair held telephone conversations on Thursday. Some speculated that Putin's apparent rush to the Kremlin indicated something "unusual."
"The reason for the urgent arrival of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin is also closely followed by the Russian media. Unusual things are happening," one Twitter user wrote.
"Russian media report that several minutes ago Putin unexpectedly rushed to the Kremlin," Gerashchenko tweeted. "What could have happened?
Responding to the allegations, Peskov told reporters that Putin arrived at the Kremlin late at night because he had meetings scheduled "rather early" on Thursday.
"Putin has an apartment in the Kremlin, where he spends the night quite often. He worked yesterday in Ogaryovo and, having finished all his work in Ogaryovo because today he had meetings in the Kremlin rather early, he arrived in the Kremlin," Peskov said.
It is "common practice" and "happens very often," he added.
At the end of March, Putin said in an interview on the state-run Russia 24 channel that he often spends the night in an apartment in the Kremlin.
"I have an apartment here that I've been spending a lot of time in lately and I work here and sleep very often," he said.
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