Is Putin actually using a body double to avoid assassins…and Covid?

From false teeth and a quicker walk to rumours of plastic surgery – could Vladimir Putin really be using a body double to avoid assassins… and Covid-19?

Observers have pointed to the Kremlin strongman’s changing appearance over the years as possible evidence that he uses someone else to stand in for him on engagements he either does not want to make or considers too dangerous.

The speculation ran rife again overnight when Putin made a surprise visit to the city of Derbent in southern Russia’s Dagestan region, with footage showing how the despot dived into a nighttime crowd like a Hollywood actor on a red carpet.

This is despite the Russian leader showing signs of paranoia around catching Covid-19, and amid reports that he fears being assassinated to the point that he only has direct contact with those inside his shrinking inner circle. 

The rumour was also fuelled by a recent picture of Putin with Chechen republic head Ramzan Kadyrov, showing the president with bloated and mottled skin.

And in March, a video claiming the 70-year-old is using body doubles went viral.

Here, MailOnline takes a look back at appearances that have raised  suspicions the despot uses doppelgängers…

The most recent speculation came this week after Putin survived the biggest challenge to his 23-year reign as Russia’s president.

Under orders from mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, fighters from his Wagner private military company seized Roztov-on-don and marched on Moscow.

A crisis was only narrowly averted with Prigozhin striking an amnesty deal with the Kremlin. The deal stipulates that the Wagner troops will not face charges, and in exchange they must disband or join the Russian army.

Prigozhin himself will be allowed to live in exile across the border in Belarus.

While Putin has worked to assert the dominance of the Russian state in the days since the mutiny, analysts have said the president’s position in the Kremlin has never looked weaker, with Kyiv saying the countdown has begun to the end of his rule.

The despot has used his typical televised speeches to assure Russians that he is the one in control, but last night he made an uncharacteristic visit to a meet-and-greet that saw him greeted by a crowd as he posed for selfies with young girls. 

Seemingly imbued with fresh energy after averting a small scale civil war last week, the normally stoic and isolated Putin was uncharacteristically personable, shaking hands and planting kisses on the head of a young teenage girl who gushed over him and pleaded with her mother to snap a photo of her with the president.

In another bizarre moment he shakes hands with – and appears to adjust something on the uniform of – an officer carrying what may be his nuclear briefcase. He has not greeted his security apparatchiks in such a way previously.

The scene was markedly different to the extreme, seemingly paranoid measures taken by Putin in the last few years to avoid close contact with the public, other world leaders and even members of his own government.

The strongman has enforced strict quarantines for anyone outside of his own close circle before meetings, likely out of fear of catching Covid-19.

But his transformative behaviour overnight has led many, including senior Russian figures, to speculate that the Putin seen in shaky camera footage greeting adoring fans in Dagestan was in fact a body double.

A longtime Moscow diplomat said on Thursday: ‘It is getting impossible to believe that there is only one Putin.

‘There are several – very good lookalikes, yet they behave somewhat differently. This one diving into the crowd in Dagestan behaves differently to the traditional Putin.’

Commentator Viktor Alksnis, a Soviet military tactician and politician who is now a Western-based analyst known as the Black Colonel, said: ‘Why is Putin meeting with visitors in the Kremlin after their two-week quarantine and at a great distance, while in Derbent is calmly into the crowd and even hugs and kisses some citizens?

‘How can the physical security of the president be ensured under such conditions? Something is not right here.

‘It looks like a theatrical production in which Putin is not really Putin.’

And pro-war Russian nationalist and former FSB colonel Igor ‘Strelkov’ Girkin declared for certain that it was a Putin double in Dagestan.

‘A person vaguely resembling the president – and not at all requiring compliance with the two-week quarantine necessary to get an appointment with [Putin] – was walking around Derbent,’ he said.

His appearance in Derbent came a day after a picture of Putin with Chechen republic head Ramzan Kadyrov showed the president appearing bloated with mottled skin – also prompting people to question if it was actually Putin visiting the region.

Some likened his appearance to that of a waxwork model. 

The speculation in recent days is by no means the first time it has been suggested Putin has been deploying a body double to public events amid claims he is suffering from poor health, is afraid of assassination, or is terrified of catching Covid.

Infact, the chatter around the theory grew so loud that the Kremlin was forced to deny the rumours in April, with Putin’s official spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying: ‘You have probably heard that he has very many doubles who work instead of him while he sits in a bunker… [This is] yet another lie.’

‘You see yourselves what our president is like: He always was, and is now, mega-active — those who work next to him can hardly keep up with him. His energy can only be envied,’ Peskov added.

Many Russia experts have sided with Peskov on this issue, saying that it is perhaps wishful thinking from the West that Putin is showing signs of illness, and is therefore in need of a body double.

However, others have said that nothing coming out of the Kremlin can be trusted, and that Moscow has told so many lies it is impossible to know when officials there are telling the truth.

Peskov’s rebuke of the rumours followed a viral video in March that seized on speculation that Putin’s only trip so far to newly-invaded territory in Mariupol on March 19 was performed by a doppelgänger.

The video asked: ‘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 producers of the video said that a specialist has noticed differences in the Russian president’s appearance, like the ledge on his earlobe, a mole or his wrinkles which ‘constantly change’. 

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.

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.

For Putin’s Mariupol visit, the video claims ‘they forgot to put in his jaw’ as it looks different to Putin’s and also questions if the ‘double’ has false teeth.

On Monday, March 20, Kyiv official Anton Gerashchenko posted three images of Putin’s chin and questioned whether they belonged to the same man.

The Interior Minister advisor wrote: ‘What’s up with your chin, Putin?

‘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?’

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 March 18.

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.

The Telegram channel General SVR insisted Putin had not been to Sevastopol or Mariupol, a city invaded after a bloody battle last year.

‘The information from the Kremlin’s resources that Vladimir Putin visited Crimea and Mariupol is NOT true,’ claimed the channel which says it has insider sources.

In Crimea, a double of the president was noted with a short visit and solely for the sake of a video photo shoot.’

There have been repeated claims that Putin uses body doubles on some trips outside Moscow, or when there are many people around.

In January, General SVR also claimed that Putin’s visit to UFA involved a ‘body double’ and not the real president. It predicted: ‘Soon, the understudy will appear more and more often as president,’ said the channel. ‘The President’s health tends to worsen.’

In Ufa, the ‘president’ was seen paying his respects at the open coffin of iron-fisted Murtaza Rakhimov, ex-leader of oil-rich Russian republic Bashkortostan, who died aged 88. He also met the region’s head, Radiy Habirov. 

Previously, in October, 2022, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, head of military intelligence, questioned whether the real Putin still existed. 

Budanov said the military intelligence service had detected Putin doubles in the past standing in for him on ‘special occasions’ – but added that now, it is ‘usual practice’ for the Russian president. 

Budanov said: ‘We know specifically about three people that keep appearing, but how many there are, we don’t know. They all had plastic surgery to look alike.

‘The one thing that gives them away is their height. It’s visible in videos and pictures. Also gesturing, body language and earlobes, since they are unique for every person.’ 

A month prior, footage of Putin apparently showed him falling asleep during a meeting, coupled with claims he has complained about fatigue and shortness of breath to doctors, which raised fresh doubts over his health.

A body double was even on standby in case Putin was unable to attend the meeting, claimed Telegram channel General SVR, which has long claimed Putin is suffering serious health issues.

In August, Budanov had previously claimed that Putin was using body doubles, pointing to the president’s changing ears over the years as proof of his theory.

The 69-year-old Russian president’s health has been the topic of fierce discussion among commentators.

His close ally Nikolai Patrushev is said to have stood in for the president during his medical appointments.

He said in a TV appearance: ‘The picture, let’s say, of the ears, is different… And it’s like a fingerprint, each person’s ear picture is unique. It cannot be repeated.’

Budanov further alleged that Putin body doubles ‘have different habits, different mannerisms, different gaits, sometimes even different heights if you looked closely’.

The Major General had previously claimed a Vladimir Putin body ‘double’ may have been used for his arrival at a summit in Iran to meet Turkey’s president Erdogan in July 2022.

While the Russian leader looked awkward as he came down the steps of his presidential plane in Tehran, Ukrainian sources noted that he moved unusually quickly and was more alert than in prior public appearances.

The Russian premier looked animated when greeting the waiting party, before removing his jacket and clambering into a heavily armoured limousine.

Budanov said he was suspicious of Putin’s appearance in a live interview on Ukraine’s 1+1 news channel.

Ukrainian reports said Budanov suggested that a Putin lookalike could have flown to Tehran to meet with the presidents of Iran and Turkey.

‘I will only hint,’ he said. ‘Please look at the moment of Putin’s exit from the plane. Is it Putin at all?’

Putin addressed the idea of using body doubles himself in February 2020, when he admitted that officials had considered using doubles, but he claimed the idea was rejected.

‘I discarded the idea of any doubles,’ he said.

He was advised in the early 2000s when Russia was hit by terrorist attacks that a lookalike should take his place at events where the head of state might be at risk, he said.

‘This was during the toughest time of our war against terrorism,’ he said.

As Prime Minister and then as President, Putin oversaw the war against Islamist separatists from Chechnya between 1999 and 2000. 

After Russia claimed victory, terror attacks increased in the Caucasus while bombers also targeted the country’s main cities.

‘The double would go where things were dodgy?’ asked Vandenko.

‘Well yes, go, put in appearances,’ Putin confirmed.

Body doubles were reportedly used by former Kremlin leaders, for example longtime Soviet supremos Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev.

In 2009, people in Sochi did not believe that a walkabout by then President Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Putin involved the real leaders. Medvedev said at the time: ‘We are not doubles, we are real.’