Putin complains old friends ​'no longer recognise him​' amid body double rumours

11 January 2024 , 10:53

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Russian President Putin says his friends no longer recognise him (Image: AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has complained his old friends "no longer recognise him" amid rumours he regularly uses body doubles.

The 71-year-old dictator told an audience in remote Chukotka that school and university classmates do not believe it’s really him. He said: "When I [very occasionally] meet my classmates or fellow university students, they often look at me and say - ‘I don’t believe it, is it actually you, or not you?’ You see, a person doesn’t always know how they would behave when they find themselves at a certain level of responsibility."

Dr Valery Solovey, a former professor at Moscow’s prestigious Institute of International Relations [MGIMO] who claims Putin is dead and has been fully replaced by doppelgängers, seized on the comment. He said: "The so-called ‘Putin’ publicly complained that his friends no longer recognised him and believed that they were dealing with a double." Solovey, who once taught future Russian spies and diplomats, was challenged by a top Ukrainian TV interviewer Dmitry Gordon over his extraordinary and bizarre claims that Putin died in October 2023 with his body stashed in a freezer while his security chief Nikolai Patrushev is secretly running the Kremlin.

A disbelieving Gordon quizzed him: "Now it turns out that Putin is alive [and not dead as you said]. So you tell me, is he in the freezer or is he alive and well?" The academic hit back: "He is in a freezer. He was moved in December to a new refrigerator…to one designed to store bodies. That's the only change that applies to him after his death [in October]. There were no other changes. So all of the information I have given you remains the same... And there's no chance of him being resurrected."

He predicts later this year Putin’s death will be announced and 46-year-old agriculture minister Dmitry Patrushev, by then appointed prime minister, will succeed him. Dmitry Patrushev is the son of Nikolai Patrushev, 72, secretary of the powerful Russian security council.

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Meanwhile, the United States, Ukraine and six allies accused Russia on Wednesday of using North Korean ballistic missiles and launchers in a series of devastating aerial attacks against Ukraine, in violation of U.N. sanctions. Their joint statement, issued ahead of a Security Council meeting on Ukraine, cited the use of North Korean weapons during waves of strikes on December 30, January 2 and January 6 and said the violations increased the suffering of the Ukrainian people, "support Russia’s brutal war of aggression, and undermine the global nonproliferation regime."

Will Stewart