To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web
browser that
supports HTML5
video
Ukraine’s intelligence chief has sensationally claimed the ‘real’ Vladimir Putin has not been seen for more than a year – adding that he does not even know if he’s still alive.
Major-General Kyrylo Budanov doubled down on earlier claims the Russian president uses doppelgängers for public appearances.
In an extraordinary interview, he said of Putin: ‘The one who everyone used to know was last seen around June 26, 2022.’
Reports that night suggested the tyrant had made a late-night dash to the Kremlin for crisis talks with allies, including Belarus’s strongman president Alexander Lukashenko.
Asked by the interviewer whether ‘he is either not alive, or else he is in a really bad health state’, Budanov replied: ‘Or he doesn’t want to appear. There might be so many different reasons.’
The military intelligence chief referred to a recent video of Putin where he appears to glance down at his left wrist to check the time.
Putin is known to wear his watch on his right wrist.
Later on, he bizarrely removes the timepiece and fidgets with it in his hand.
Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in the 15th BRICS Summit via videoconference in Moscow, Russia (Picture: EPA)
Budanov was asked about the clip by TV presenter Anzhelika Rudenko, on Crimea.Realities, linked to Radio Liberty: ‘Is this a real Putin?’
He replied: ‘Let’s leave it to everyone [to decide], so everyone leaves it to their own fantasy.’
The presenter then asks ‘but is this Putin or…’ before Budanov turns the question back on her, prompting her to say she believes it to be a body double.
Budanov then says: ‘So do I.’
He adds that it is ‘not very likely’ the real Putin.
Rudenko goes on: ‘And as for the real Putin, let me ask you directly – is he alive or not?’
The military intelligence chief replied: ‘I don’t know what to answer you.’
Rumours have swirled that Putin uses body doubles – yet they have remained just that, rumours, and the notion appears preposterous.
Often such claims are linked to the theory that the dictator is suffering terminal illness, but that he and his entourage refuse to let the Putin persona die.
Many have noted how the real Putin was social distancing long after the evident need to do so – widely perceived as a sign of ailing health.
Yet while many officials were ordered to quarantine for one or two weeks before seeing him, on several other occasions Putin has jumped into crowds with no social distancing at all.
This deepened the theory that there were two Putins.
Putin waves in front of The Naval Cathedral of Saint Nicholas during a visit to Kronstadt, on Kotlin Island, outside Saint Petersburg, on July 23 (Picture: AFP via Getty)
On Friday, he staged such a spontaneous visit to a Tver region village from where his ancestors hailed. He engaged in brief banter with locals, agreeing they needed more investment.
Telegram channel General SVR has long claimed that a sickly Putin now permanently uses a doppelgänger – a lookalike actor who has undergone plastic surgery – for public appearances.
Political analyst Dr Valery Solovey, a Putin-watching former professor at Moscow’s prestigious Institute of International Relations, a training school for spies and diplomats, claimed there were sometimes ‘comic errors’, as with the watch.
‘Western governments know perfectly well that President Putin is replaced by double,’ he said.
‘It is known by leaders of all more or less large countries across the world but everyone turns a blind eye. Why?
‘After all, these are [the] affairs of these strange Russians, let them do their thing, and fool their own people.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.