Ukraine mocked Vladimir Putin today for allegedly sending a lookalike to war-torn Mariupol on a high-security visit.
Kiev official Anton Gerashchenko posted three images of Putin’s chin and questioned whether they belonged to the same man.
He sneered: ‘What’s with your chin, Putin?’
The adviser to the Minister of the Interior published: “It seems that lately your make-up artists (that is, for the recent trips of the bunker man to the occupied Crimea and Mariupol) had to work with a rather low-quality copy, not even a double, but his copy I wonder which one was real.
One image showed Putin, 70, a month ago addressing the Federal Assembly in Moscow.
Putin a month ago in Moscow (left), his trip to Sevastopol on March 18 (center) and his visit to Mariupol on March 19 (right)
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Another was Putin’s reported visit to the Crimean naval port of Sevastopol on March 18.
And the third was of images released the next day that evidently showed the dictator in war-bombed Mariupol.
The first image showed his firm and precise chin.
But the image in Sevastopol, taken from Ukraine in 2014, caused a drooping chin, while Mariupol’s chin appears firmer but less firm than in the Moscow image.
A Russian source said: “She has these moments where she looks like a babushka (grandmother) with no teeth.”
There have been repeated claims that Putin uses body doubles on some trips outside of Moscow, or when there are a lot of people around.
Today, the Telegram channel General SVR insisted that Putin had not been to Sevastopol or Mariupol, a city overrun after a bloody battle last year.
“Information from Kremlin resources that Vladimir Putin visited Crimea and Mariupol is NOT true,” the channel said, claiming to have inside sources.
In the Crimea, a double of the president was noticed with a short visit and solely for the sake of a video photo shoot.
The stunt double was “forbidden from meaningful conversations and prolonged meetings, for fear of embarrassment or other (mistake) from the stand-in.”
The Russian anti-Putin channel claimed: ‘The same applies to the visit to Mariupol.
“The double was filmed (but) didn’t talk much and didn’t stay anywhere for a long time.”
In Mariupol, the president was seen on a night drive without a seatbelt with little visible security.
‘Putin’s ‘spontaneous’ rides around Mariupol at the wheel, without blocking the streets, without a caravan of guards, and going out ‘to the people’ in the busy front-line city is not only unrealistic, it is not even funny.
“The president was at that time many hundreds of miles away, warm and completely safe.”
Putin with his ‘pathological cowardice’ was not ‘risking his precious life’.
Today, the Telegram channel General SVR insisted that Putin had not been to Sevastopol or Mariupol, a city overrun after a bloody battle last year. Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during an extended annual meeting of the Russian Interior Ministry Board in Moscow today.
The channel stated: ‘Actively using a double, recently, Putin is becoming more and more of a ‘fake’ president.
‘The whole country is already laughing at the substitute’s inconsistency with the original’ in appearance, behavior and habits.
Instead, the real Putin was ‘under treatment’ and preparing for Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s state visit today.
It was also claimed that in Mariupol, Putin had encountered looters when he was greeted by locals who had been assigned new housing.
The Mariupol.Sprotiv channel identified a pensioner who showed the president his new flat as Nikolay Lotkov, 70.
Joining him were his son Dmitry and daughter-in-law Ekaterina, who Ukrainian sources say were involved in looting during the siege of Mariupol last year.
Another woman who knew Putin, named Irina Volosatova, is also charged with looting.
He thanked Putin for taking control of the city and creating “a little piece of paradise.”
But a source told the resistance publication: “It was her and her family who ransacked my parents’ flat and our neighbor’s flat from an upper floor. Her whole family was busy looting and threatening my parents.”
However, this can only deepen suggestions that this was a Putin lookalike, as protesters normally never go near the dictator.
She was heard in the footage yelling: “It’s all lies, it’s all just for show.”
However, this can only deepen suggestions that this was a Putin lookalike, as protesters normally never go near the dictator.
A security man is ringed while searching for the gunman, but few officers were visible in Mariupol on his ‘spontaneous’ trip to the city.
