Kremlin Official Jokes About 'Three or Four' Putin Body Doubles

A prominent Kremlin official and ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin jokingly suggested that the leader uses multiple body doubles, amid new claims from researchers.

A report recently published by the British tabloid, The Sun, said that a team of Japanese experts in areas like facial and voice recognition had determined that Putin is allegedly using two body doubles. The findings were first shown on the Japanese station, TBS, and purportedly used artificial intelligence technology to compare various public appearances by Putin, looking for similarities and discrepancies. These claims were further circulated in a post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs and a prolific social media commentator on Wednesday. The precise research methods used to make this determination could not be independently verified by Newsweek.

"By analyzing Putin's various speeches with the use of modern artificial intelligence technology, Japanese experts have concluded that the Russian president probably has at least two doubles," Gerashchenko summarized in his post. "One of the doubles was identified as the 'real' Putin, who attended the Red Square parade in May 2023. After comparing the facial features of this Putin with the one who drove across the Crimean Bridge in a Mercedes car in December 2022, the Japanese experts found only 53 percent similarity. An even smaller resemblance, just 40 percent, was found between the 'parade Putin' and the president who visited Mariupol in March 2023."

On Sunday, Gerashchenko took to X again, sharing a clip from a Russian state-run news program in which Dmitry Peskov, press secretary for the Kremlin and a leading Russian propagandist, joked about Putin using even more doubles, while ultimately assuring viewers that such a thing was not occurring.

"Experts are now wondering if there are three of four," Peskov said, according to a translation provided by Gerashchenko. "And who do we see every day now, is he the third or the fourth double? It's unclear, isn't it? But Putin is the only one."

Gerashchenko had a less than charitable read on the official's comments, writing: "Russian presidential spokesman Peskov has to personally assure the people again and again that Putin has no doubles."

Newsweek reached out to Russian officials via email for comment.

Late last month, Peskov issued another denial of body double rumors amid renewed claims that Putin was ill, which have circulated consistently since Russia's invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022.

"Everything is fine with him, this is absolutely another fake," Peskov said, according to Reuters. "This belongs to the category of absurd information hoaxes that a whole series of media discuss with enviable tenacity. This evokes nothing but a smile."