Is the Putin we see actually the real Putin, or is he using body doubles?

A video on social media in Russia is going viral with rumours that Vladimir Putin uses multiple body doubles to travel on official business after Ukrainian officials questioned whether his visit to Mariupol, Ukraine was performed by a doppelgänger.

Kyiv official Anton Gerashchenko posted three images of Putin’s chin after the visit and questioned whether they all belonged to the same man. And there does seem to be a different face shape in the photos.

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?”

The viral social media video says: “Who visited Mariupol? Specialists long ago noticed the differences between the Russian president’s body doubles.

“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.”

The video concludes by asking: “After all, how many Putins do we have? Who is ruling Russia?”

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

Rumours abound that the warmonger’s “understudies” – who have undergone plastic surgery in order to resemble him – are used increasingly as Putin´s health worsens amid more rumours of cancer and early-stage Parkinson’s.

According to wikipedia, body doubles, or political decoys, are people employed to impersonate a politician, to draw attention away from the real person or to take risks on that person’s behalf. This can also apply to military figures, or civilians impersonated for political or espionage purposes.

There are some famous historical examples. According to Joe R. Reeder, an undersecretary for the U.S. Army from 1993 to 1997, a number of figures around the world have or have had decoys, including Manuel Noriega, Raoul Cédras, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro, George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden.

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