Doc Blows Whistle on Phony Hospital Putin Visit

ITAR-TASS: IVANOVO, RUSSIA. DECEMBER 17, 2010. Cardiologist Ivan Smirnov, 24, at a local heart clinic. On Thursday, Khrenov called Putin during an annual Q&A session and claimed that during Putin’s visit to the Ivanovo Region Clinical Hospital in the early November 2010, things at the hospital were made to look much better than they really were. Khrenov argued that the Russian prime minister had been shown state-of-the-art equipment temporarily borrowed from another hospital, the patients in the wards had been replaced with disguised staff members, and the staff had been forced to lie about their salaries.