Video claiming Putin is using body doubles goes viral in Russia as bizarre theory gains momentum

A video is going viral on Russian social media claiming Vladimir Putin is conning his people by using multiple body doubles for trips he doesn’t want to make.

It seizes on speculation that the Kremlin president’s only trip so far to newly-invaded territory in Mariupol was performed by a doppelgänger, and asks: ‘Who is ruling Russia?’

It is unclear who made the footage but it appears to be aimed at reaching Russians who rely on uber-loyalist state media for their news.

The footage poses the question: ‘Who visited Mariupol?’

It states: ‘Specialists long ago noticed the differences between the Russian president’s body doubles.

The video promotes the theory that Putin is using doppelgängers for trips he doesn’t want to make

Kyiv official Anton Gerashchenko posted three images of Putin’s chin and questioned whether they belonged to the same man. He taunted: ‘What’s up with your chin, Putin?’

‘A ledge on Putin’s earlobe constantly changes.

‘As does a small mole on his face.

‘One of the Putins has straight wrinkles on his face, the other has small and interrupted [wrinkles].

‘This is impossible even if he had botox injections.’

Putin is widely believed to have had regular plastic surgery as he has aged since first becoming acting president on the last day of 1999.

The video states: ‘Specialists long ago noticed the differences between the Russian president’s body doubles. 

Putin is widely believed to have had regular plastic surgery as he has aged since first becoming acting president on the last day of 1999

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Vladimir Putin’s first visit to Mariupol, occupied Ukraine, late on 18 March 2023

The footage poses the question: ‘Who visited Mariupol?’

The video seizes on speculation that the Kremlin president’s only trip so far to newly-invaded territory in Mariupol was performed by a doppelgänger, and asks: ‘Who is ruling Russia?’

Rumours are rife that Putin ‘understudies’ – who have undergone plastic surgery to resemble him – are deployed increasingly as his health worsens amid rumours of cancer and early stage Parkinson’s.

‘Evidently the weakest double was sent to Mariupol,’ states the video in Russian.

‘They forgot to put in his jaw.’

It questions if this ‘double’ has false teeth.

It concludes by asking: ‘After all, how many Putins do we have?

‘Who is ruling Russia?’

Earlier Ukraine mocked Putin for allegedly ‘sending a lookalike to war-ravaged Mariupol’ in a high security visit.

Kyiv official Anton Gerashchenko posted three images of Putin’s chin and questioned whether they belonged to the same man.

He taunted: ‘What’s up with your chin, Putin?’

The Interior Minister advisor posted: ‘Looks like lately his make-up artists (i.e. for the recent trips of the bunker man to the occupied Crimea and Mariupol) had to work with quite a low-quality copy, not even a double but its copy.

‘I wonder which one of them was real?’

‘Evidently the weakest double was sent to Mariupol,’ states the video in Russian.

Ukraine also mocked Putin for allegedly ‘sending a lookalike to war-ravaged Mariupol’ in a high security visit

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The video claims: ‘One of the Putins has straight wrinkles on his face, the other has small and interrupted [wrinkles].

Rumours are rife that Putin ‘understudies’ – who have undergone plastic surgery to resemble him – are deployed increasingly as his health worsens amid rumours of cancer and early stage Parkinson’s

One picture showed Putin, 70, one month ago in an address to the Federal Assembly in Moscow.

Another was Putin’s reported visit to naval port Sevastopol in Crimea on 18 March.

And the third was from footage released the following day evidently showing the dictator in war-blitzed Mariupol.

The first image showed his chin tight and precise.

But the image in Sevastopol – grabbed from Ukraine in 2014 – incited a sagging chin, while the Mariupol chin appears firmer but less so than in the Moscow picture.

Two former Putin associates have also suggested he uses doubles.

A former KGB spy who studied with him at espionage school – Sergei Zhirnov – said he had believed until now that claims of Putin using doppelgängers were ‘conspiracy theories’ – but has changed his mind.

He contrasted a formal speech made in Moscow by an isolated, ‘skinny’ and coughing ex-spy Putin on 21 February with an appearance at a pro-war rally the next day in the city.

In this case, ‘a totally different Putin pops up’ with ‘a wider face as if he bloated in 24 hours’, he told Ukrainian TV.

‘He has a totally different shape of eye orbits, a totally different head, absolutely different wrinkles – a different voice.’

And a former Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov warned that the existence of several doubles poses a risk if Russia lurches into a coup because of his failing war policies.

‘The presence of a double can interfere: you think that you have arrested Putin, but it turns out that you have held his understudy,’ he said.

‘You can arrest a stand-in, show him on TV signing his ‘resignation’, and announce the transfer of power to the Prime Minister or to some Committee of National Salvation.’

But it would be necessary for the ‘original Putin to prove that he is him, and not a double’.

He stated: ‘In short, if the doppelganger exists, then the people responsible for his movements are potentially very important participants in the process and the organisers of the conspiracy should not forget about them.’