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.

Putin accused of surrounding himself with same 'actors' at series of events

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