Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a joint press statement with his Kyrgyz counterpart right after talks in Bishkek on Oct. 12, 2023.
Vyacheslav Oseledko | Afp | Getty Visuals
There has been lengthy-standing speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin makes use of human body doubles to stand in for him at public engagements for health or safety good reasons, but the Kremlin ridiculed the rumors Tuesday.
Requested by reporters to comment on an unsourced report on a Russian Telegram channel proclaiming Putin experienced suffered a significant health and fitness episode on Sunday — a report picked up by some Western media stores even so — Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov laughed.
“Every thing is wonderful with him, this is definitely a different pretend,” Peskov said, in accordance to a Reuters translation, denying a even further dilemma on irrespective of whether Putin makes use of any body doubles.
“This belongs to the classification of absurd details hoaxes that a whole sequence of media talk about with enviable tenacity. This evokes almost nothing but a smile,” Peskov included.
Putin has designed substantially of his management on an impression of him as an active, macho “rough dude,” and has even been photographed topless when using a horse all through fishing and looking trips.
Aged 71, Putin is commonly predicted to operate for the presidency once again in 2024 subsequent modifications to Russia’s constitution allowing him to do so, although he has not confirmed this.
Putin himself has denied making use of system doubles but mentioned in a 2020 interview with Russia’s TASS information agency that he experienced been presented the opportunity to use just one for safety factors, in the course of Russia’s second war from Chechnya in the early 2000s, but experienced not performed so.
“I refused to have doubles. It was through the most challenging time of the combat versus terrorism,” Putin stated, with out giving even further aspects.
It really is not the to start with time the Kremlin has rebuffed these rumors, which normally abound when Putin is pictured showing a bit distinctive, this kind of as possessing a distinct skin complexion or not carrying a check out, for illustration.
In April, Putin’s spokesman Peskov again turned down the entire body double statements, indicating, “you have probably listened to that he [Putin] has incredibly a lot of doubles who work alternatively of him though he sits in a bunker.”
Contacting it “but yet another lie,” Peskov claimed, in comments released by TASS, that “as a subject of point, he has normally been and is mega-lively. We can rarely hold up with him – people who get the job done with him. His electrical power is enviable and a single can only wish to be as wholesome as he is,” Peskov reported.
“Of training course, he isn’t going to sit in any bunkers. This is also a lie,” Peskov additional.
The president, a former Judo champion, is mentioned to be pretty wary of his health, with particularly strict actions introduced in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic to limit his publicity to the infectious condition.