The Kremlin has dismissed speculation that it could be using body doubles of President Vladimir Putin for some events. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov ridiculed such claims as “amusing.”
“We have only one Putin!” Peskov said at the ‘Russia’ exhibition that opened in Moscow on Saturday. He said that many ridiculous, absurd, and amusing things appear in various news outlets and on social media, naming the rumors about the Russian president’s alleged body doubles as examples.
The Kremlin spokesman joked that “experts” on the internet are now wondering how many doppelgangers Putin has and which ones they are seeing each day. “Today [the Russian officials and public figures led by Putin] laid flowers to the Minin and Pozharsky Monument… Was it [Putin’s] third or fourth body double? I have no idea,” the spokesman jokingly added.
On November 4, Russia celebrates Unity Day, a holiday that commemorates the end of the ‘Time of Troubles’ in the 17th century and the expulsion of the Polish-Lithuanian occupation forces from Moscow by a volunteer militia army led by Prince Dmitry Pozharsky and a merchant, Kuzma Minin.