Global Courant 2023-04-26 14:05:55
Recurring rumors of a body double flared up after President Putin visited troops in occupied Kherson last week.
The Kremlin has dismissed rumors that President Vladimir Putin has doppelgängers similar to the 70-year-old leader and that he spends much of his time shielded in a nuclear bunker.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov summed up what he believed to be fabrications about Russia in a speech that explored the country’s history since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the causes of the war in Ukraine and the alleged perfidy of Western society discussed.
“You’ve probably heard that he (Putin) has a lot of doppelgängers who work instead of him while he’s in a bunker,” Peskov said at a conference in Moscow before chuckling, “Another lie.”
“You see for yourself what our president is like: he always was and is now mega active – those who work next to him can hardly keep up with him,” he said.
“His energy can only be envied. His health, God willing, can only be desired. Of course he’s not in bunkers. This is also a lie,” added Peskov.
Putin visits the headquarters of Russian troops fighting in Ukraine (Pool Photo via AP)
The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed speculation that Putin, Russia’s main leader since 1999, is ill.
During a state visit to Moscow last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Putin he was confident voters would again support the Russian leader in the 2024 presidential election. Putin has not yet said whether he will seek another term.
When he first came to power, Putin promised to end the chaos that gripped post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s, but the invasion of Ukraine is the most serious military crisis faced by a chief of the Kremlin since the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-89.
The conflict in Ukraine has led to the most serious confrontation with the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, as Putin has decided to turn away from the West towards China.
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