Vladimir Putin for the first time addressed claims suggesting he has hired a “body double” to attend public events in his place.
Putin has been dogged by persistent rumours about his health, with multiple analysts suggesting he has been struggling with a variety of illnesses varying from cancer to Parkinson’s disease.
Last October, a Telegram channel claiming intimate links with the Putin regime alleged the Russian president had collapsed at his summer retreat and died of a heart attack – resulting in the Kremlin turning to a double to avoid plunging the country into a crisis.
The Kremlin however issued a rare statement denying the claims and also insisted Putin has not been using body doubles.
The Russian leader this week admitted during an outing that friends “often look at me and say, ‘I don’t believe it, is it actually you, or not you?'”
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Putin said the comments showed former classmates or colleagues don’t “always know how they would behave when they find themselves at a certain level of responsibility.”
The unexpected comment was immediately seized upon by Valery Solovey, a former Institute of International Relations academic, who in the past claimed Putin had died.
Sharing a clip of Putin’s recent visit to Chukotka, Solovey noted that “the so-called ‘Putin’ publicly complained that his friends no longer recognized him.”
The former academic was among those who in October 2023 claimed Putin had died of a heart attack, suggesting the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, had taken over running the country.
Solovey has consistently suggested the Russian leader has been struggling with ill health since 2017.
