Vladimir Putin was mocked by Ukraine today for allegedly sending a lookalike to war-ravaged Mariupol in a high security visit.
Kyiv official Anton Gerashchenko posted three images of Putin’s chin and questioned whether they belonged to the same man.
He taunted: ‘What’s up with your chin, Putin?’
The Interior Minister advisor posted: ‘Looks like lately his make-up artists (i.e. for the recent trips of the bunker man to the occupied Crimea and Mariupol) had to work with quite a low-quality copy, not even a double but its copy. I wonder which one of them was real?’
One picture showed Putin, 70, one month ago in an address to the Federal Assembly in Moscow.
Another was Putin’s reported visit to naval port Sevastopol in Crimea on 18 March.
And the third was from footage released the following day evidently showing the dictator in war-blitzed Mariupol.
The first image showed his chin tight and precise.
But the image in Sevastopol – grabbed from Ukraine in 2014 – incited a sagging chin, while the Mariupol chin appears firmer but less so than in the Moscow picture.
A Russian source said: ‘He has these moments when he looks like a babushka [grandmother] without teeth.’
There have been repeated claims that Putin uses body doubles on some trips outside Moscow, or when there are many people around.
Today Telegram channel General SVR insisted Putin had not been to Sevastopol or Mariupol, a city invaded after a bloody battle last year.
‘The information from the Kremlin’s resources that Vladimir Putin visited Crimea and Mariupol is NOT true,’ claimed the channel which says it has insider sources.
In Crimea, a double of the president was noted with a short visit and solely for the sake of a video photo shoot.’
The double was ‘forbidden to conduct meaningful conversations and hold long meetings, fearing embarrassment or another [mistake] of the understudy.’
The Russian anti-Putin channel alleged: ‘The same applies to the visit to Mariupol.
‘The double was filmed [but]did not talk much and did not stay anywhere for a long time.’
In Mariupol, the president was seen on a nocturnal drive not wearing a seatbelt with scant visible security.
‘The ‘spontaneous’ rides of ‘Putin’ around Mariupol at the wheel, without blocking the streets, without a motorcade of guards, and going out ‘to the people’ in the front-line occupied city is not only unrealistic, it’s not even funny.
‘The President was at that time many hundreds of kilometres away, warm and completely safe.’
Putin with his ‘pathological cowardice’ was not ‘risking his precious life’.
The channel claimed: ‘Actively using a double, recently, Putin is increasingly becoming a ‘fake’ president.
‘The whole country is already laughing over the inconsistency of the understudy with the original’ in appearance, behavior and habits.
Instead the real Putin was ‘undergoing treatment’ and preparing for today’s state visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
It was also claimed that in Mariupol, Putin had met with looters when he was greeted by locals who had been allocated new housing.
Mariupol.Sprotiv channel identified a pensioner who showed the president his new flat as Nikolay Lotkov, 70.
Next to him was his son Dmitry and daughter-in-law Ekaterina, who Ukrainian sources alleged were involved in looting during the siege of Mariupol last year.
Another woman who met Putin, named Irina Volosatova, is also accused of looting.
She thanked Putin for taking over the city and creating ‘a small piece of paradise’.
But a source told the resistance publication: ‘It was her and her family who looted both my parents’ flat, and our neighbour’s flat from a floor above.’Her entire family was busy looting and threatening my parents.’
Yet this may only deepen suggestions that this was a Putin doppelgänger as normally protesters never get close to the dictator.
She was heard on footage shouting: ‘It’s all lies, it’s all just for show.’
Yet this may only deepen suggestions that this was a Putin doppelgänger as normally protesters never get close to the dictator.
One security man is ringed as she searches to see the barracker – but there were few operatives visible in Mariupol on his ‘spontaneous’ trip to the city.
Source : Daily Mail
