Vladimir Putin’s bodyguards bag up his excrement while he is abroad so it can be brought back Russia, according to a report.

       The bizarre claim was first reported in French news magazine Paris Match by two veteran investigative journalists.

       According to the report, members of the Russian president’s Federal Protection Service (FPS) are responsible for collecting his bodily waste in specialised packets which are then placed in a dedicated briefcase for the journey home.

       The FPS is the department tasked with protecting high-ranking state officials, including the president.

       According to reporters Regis Gente, an author of two books on Russia, and Mikhail Rubin, who has covered Russia for over a decade, examples of such excrement collections included during Putin's visit to France on 29 May 2017, and during his October 2019 trip to Saudi Arabia.

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       The exercise is allegedly carried out in an attempt to stop foreign powers from gathering information about the Russian leader’s health.

       Ex-BBC journalist Farida Rustamova appeared to confirm the report, writing on Twitter that she was aware of a similar incident in Vienna and that Putin had used “a special private bathroom” and a “porta-potty” in the past.

       She cited an unnamed source a saying the president had carried out the practice since the beginning of his leadership.

       Putin’s health has been a heightened topic of speculation and discussion in recent months since his decision to invade Ukraine on 24 February.

       A growing number of unconfirmed reports allege the 69-year-old has cancer and that his health is deteriorating at pace.

       An FSB officer has claimed Putin “has no more than two to three years to stay alive”, adding the Russian president has “a severe form of rapidly progressing cancer”.

       Footage of the president from mid-February appeared to show him shaking uncontrollably during a meeting with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko just days before he invaded Ukraine, sparking rumours online that he may be suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

       He was also pictured coughing and huddled under a blanket at Russia’s Victory Day parade in May, while another clip showed the Russian leader appearing to limp.

       There have been reports in the past of stools being used as a way to gather intelligence.

       A former Soviet agent previously claimed Joseph Stalin spied on Mao Zedong, among other foreign leaders, by analysing his excrement in a lab.

       In 2016, Igor Atamenko told the BBC Stalin’s secret police aimed to analyse Chairman Mao by formulating psychological profiles from his excrement in a top secret laboratory.

       Special toilets were allegedly installed for Mao to use when he visited Moscow for 10 days in 1949.

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       The toilets were not connected to sewers, but collected his waste in secret boxes to be taken to the lab and studied for varying levels of potassium and amino acids, which were thought to aid psychological profiling.

       In another example, British spies are claimed to have sifted through soiled toilet paper used by Soviet troops in East Germany during the Cold War, according to the British military expert Tony Geraghty.