Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has publicly ridiculed speculation about alleged doppelgängers of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Now experts are wondering whether there are three or four and who we see every day,” Peskov told young people in Moscow, referring to discussions on social networks about possible doubles of the Kremlin leader. “Putin – we have one,” said Peskov at the “Rossiya” forum with a large exhibition of achievements in the largest country in the world in terms of area under the Kremlin leader, who has led Russia for more than 20 years and is likely to run in the presidential election in March .
Peskov had recently repeatedly rejected reports that Putin was using lookalikes or that he was ill. For example, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, had repeatedly claimed that Putin was terminally ill. The “dictator” has no less than three doppelgangers who have been adapted to Putin’s external appearance through plastic surgery.
Putin: “I gave up on doubles”
Putin himself once said that in the past he had been advised to use a doppelganger at official appointments for security reasons. “The idea came up, but I gave up on doppelgängers,” he said.
There is constant speculation about the health of the 71-year-old, who has been in power for almost 25 years – mainly as president, but also at times as head of government. Putin himself likes to emphasize that he keeps himself physically fit. However, how healthy the Kremlin chief is is a question in Russia before the presidential election in March 2024. Putin has not yet announced his candidacy. But it is widely expected that he will run for re-election.
The huge exhibition “Rossiya” will show the development of Russia under Putin in 14 pavilions until April. The country’s more than 80 regions are presented, from Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea via Siberia to Kamchatka on the Pacific and from the Arctic in the north to the Caucasus in the south. Also presented as part of Russia are the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk, which Putin wants to completely conquer as part of his war, as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.
