Russian TV showing Putin in two places at once sparks “body double” claims

Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to be shown on state television in two different locations at once, fueling claims by opposition and pro-Ukraine accounts that it is “proof” of him using a “body double.”

Claims that the Putin has one or even several “stand-ins” stretch back decades and continue to resurface particularly as his appearance changes with age. Ukraine’s Secret Service even compiled a handy guide about how to tell the doppelgangers apart.

But while such claims offered little substance or evidence beyond idle speculation and superficial “hot takes” in the past, a series of TV segments aired on Thursday in Russia, seemingly showing the president in two places at once, raised eyebrows of even the most ardent “body double” skeptics.

A series of Twitter and Telegram posts on Friday highlighted an apparent inconsistency in Russian state news reporting from a day earlier, claiming it is conclusive proof that Putin uses body doubles.

“Russians finally realized that Putin is replaced by a stand-in for public outings,” a post on the Telegram channel TruexaNews said.

“An interesting confirmation about the existence of Putin’s doubles, presented by Russian Viktor Alksnis, who calls himself “the black colonel”, USSR and Russian MP,” tweeted Ukrainian internal affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko.

In the thread, Gerashchenko, citing the Telegram post by Alksnis, detailed what appeared to be two live TV segments aired around the same time, both featuring the Russian president.

“According to Russian media, today Putin held a meeting of the Security Council of the Russian Federation with the participation of permanent members of the Security Council,” the thread said. “The meeting was held via video conference. Since one of the main issues discussed at the Security Council was the situation at the frontlines, I decided to read its transcript and went to the official website of the President of the Russian Federation.

“And I was surprised to find that the meeting of the Security Council, including the one devoted to the situation at the front, according to the “Events” section of the official website of the President, started on 22 June at 11.55 Moscow time.

“And at 12.15, i.e. 20 minutes later, the president participated in laying flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Alexander Garden in honor of the Day of Memory and Sorrow. These 20 minutes could only be enough for the journey from the residence in the Kremlin to the Alexander Garden.

“It could be assumed that the meeting of the Security Council continued after the laying of flowers. But already at 13.05 Putin visited the Victory Museum, and at 14.50 he had a meeting with Prime Minister, Foreign Minister of Qatar Mohammed Al Thani.

“The most interesting thing is that at 12.03 the news agency “RIA Novosti” began to broadcast the meeting of the Security Council LIVE.

“TASS reported “Putin is discussing with the Security Council the situation in the zone of the “SMO” at 12.00″.

“I.e. the President of the Russian Federation was in two places at the same time – at a meeting of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and laid flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and then visited the Museum of Victory. I wonder which Putin was at the Security Council – the real one or his double? And which Putin is acting as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and directing the SMO in Ukraine? Or maybe a few doppelgangers? And each of them is designed for certain events and activities?” the thread’s author concluded.

Other pro-Ukraine channels, Russian and Ukrainian language, quickly picked up the claim, embedding it into an existing narrative about the “types” of body doubles Putin supposedly deploys for some public appearances and meetings.

The Alksnis post was reshared on the Telegram channel of former Russian Commander Igor Girkin. Formerly an officer with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Girkin is also known as Strelkov and had played a key role in Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

In 2022, he was convicted in absentia by a Dutch court for shooting down the MH17 airliner, which resulted in deaths of 298 passengers.

So what is behind the apparent TV scheduling anomaly and does it really act as proof of a Putin doppelganger’s existence?

According to the Kremlin’s website, Putin held his weekly Security Council meeting via a video conference call on Thursday. The article, published on the site, is dated June 22, 2023, 11:55 a.m. [Moscow time], though it’s not clear whether the time reflects the starting time of the meeting, the end time or the time the article was uploaded or updated.

An article on state-owned RIA Novosti’s website about the same Security Council session appeared at 12:03. Another state news outlet, TASS, began airing the “live” video of the meeting at noon.

It is also true that just minutes later, another “live” news report placed Putin at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Alexander Garden, where he laid flowers in honor of the Soviet soldiers killed in World War II.

Clips from TV news segments do not provide an exact time of Putin’s attendance at the commemorative event, nor do they have a “live broadcast” label in the corner. However, the event was also widely reported in non-state media outlets and attended by photographers.

Newsweek analyzed the metadata on some of the photos and found it to largely match the times mentioned by Gerashchenko.

For example, the photo below is timestamped as “2023:06:22 12:10:32”. Putin was then reported to have visited Moscow’s Victory Museum at 13:05 and held a meeting with the Foreign Minister of Qatar at 14:50.

While we cannot definitively rule out that a person that looks like the Russian president was used for one of these appearances, there are far more logical and likely explanations for the apparent incongruity.

First, it is hypothetically possible for Putin to finish the Kremlin meeting at about noon and make his way to the memorial, which is about a 12-minute walk from the Senate Palace, where the Russian leader’s office is located.

As president, Putin would also almost certainly be allowed to cut through the administrative buildings rather than walk around them, making the trip even shorter.

That, however, does not explain why some outlets appeared to begin the “live broadcast” of the Security Council meeting only after noon. So the answer might be even simpler: the segment branded “live” was in fact pre-recorded. There are several indications that might have been the case.

First, according to media reports, Putin’s call with the Security Council, which typically takes place on Fridays, was “unscheduled” and “unannounced,” with the members called in urgently amid Ukraine’s strikes on two bridges in occupied Crimea.

There are a number of photos made public from the meeting. The metadata on the photos dates them to June 22, 2023, at 0:00. Newsweek could not immediately verify whether the timestamp is accurate or has been tampered with.

However, it is a common and widely reported practice for the Soviet—and now Russian—state media to broadcast pre-recorded or old footage as “live,” a term that those in the industry refer to as “konservy,” or “canned food” (because it is often used when no fresh footage is available).

Russian state TV also reportedly began adding delays to live segments to avoid any “unfavorable” incidents, following an on-air protest by one of its presenters, Maria Ovsyannikova, who later fled the country.

Putin’s “appearance” in two places at once is not unprecedented. Russian media in previous years has noted the apparent incongruity, such as during Putin’s visit to Nizhny Novgorod, which was taking place while he was seen speaking “live on air” on a state television channel.

The unevidenced but persistent rumors that Putin has one or multiple “body doubles” resurface regularly, and occasionally are refuted by the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

The broader conspiracy theory of world leaders having “doubles,” stand-ins or doppelgangers is a common trope, although usually it is demoted to more conspiracy-minded niches of the internet.

A viral video in February 2023 purportedly showed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s “body double,” who turned out to be one of his bodyguards.

Conspiracy theorists have also targeted the U.S. President Joe Biden with misleading claims and manipulated footage to claim he has a body double or is wearing a mask.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry, RIA Novosti and the Russian Security Council via email for comment.