The first deputy of the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Serhii Kîslîea, again raised waves in the diplomatic and online environment, after publishing two official photos of the Kremlin leader – in different hypostases – and suggested, not without irony, that two “versions” of the Russian president may have appeared.
Vladimir Putin received the special envoy of President Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff/Photo: X
In a message posted on the X platform (former Twitter), Kîslîea commented on the obvious differences between the pictures with Putin today with President Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff, and those from Aleksandr Lukașenko, Belarus president.
“Find ten or even more differences. Putin with Lukașenko last week and Putin today with Witkoff. But where is the real little? Or maybe none of them?” Wrote the Ukrainian official.
The comment seems to reactivate a recurring theory: that the Kremlin leader would use doubles, for security or manipulation of public appearances.
An old but persistent theory
The rumors about the existence of Vladimir's “doubles” circulate for years, powered by the visible discrepancies in his public appearances. On the one hand, the Russian leader can sometimes be seen surrounded by people, shaking his hand; Otherwise, protocols impose extreme distance-including quarantine for officials who are about to meet unusual meals, which keep the interlocutors a few meters away.
Former Ukraine Security Service (SBU), Ivan Stupak, claims that the differences are obvious. According to him, if Putin appears too relaxed in the public space, without exaggerated security measures, it is very possible to be a double. “It's a simple rule,” Stupak said.
The practice of using doubles is not new in history. Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, had more, as did his son Uday-and one of them survived the regime and even told the experience in a book transformed into the movie “Dubluraului”.
Adolf Hitler was also accompanied by a circle close to people with obvious physical resemblance, one of them being his driver, Julius Schreck. Some conspiracy theories claim that in the bunker in Berlin, at the end of the war, not the Nazi leader would have committed suicide, but one of his doubles.
Neither did Iosif Stalin have been a foreigner of such practices. One of his best known “doubles” was Felix Dadaev, a former circus acrobat, who publicly recognized – at the age of 90 – that he participated in official parades instead of the Soviet leader.
Doubles: People in the service of the regime, sometimes with the price of life
Stupak emphasizes that the main function of these doubles is to “capture bullets” – that is, to be present in potentially dangerous spaces to protect the authentic leader. A kind of “human shield” that lives in permanent ambiguity.
According to the Main Directorate of Information of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (GUR), it is not excluded that the motivation of Putin's doubles is negative – not necessarily financial, but dictated by blackmail, constraint or fear.
Who did he meet with Witkoff?
The meeting between Steve Witkoff, the emissary of President Trump, and Vladimir Putin took place on August 6, in Kremlin, and took three hours – an important event in the context of Washington Russia on the Ukraine war.
But in the absence of real transparency, appearances remain the only indications. And when the appearances change too often, the questions become inevitable.
