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I suspect Vladimir Putin is dead. I think the man in charge of the country is a double. World leaders are known to have body doubles, often multiples. For clarity, I'm going to introduce "Vlad", a person who resembles Putin and was recruited into performing as a double, likely after some cosmetic surgeries to tighten up the image. Putin has reportedly had some nasty health problems over the last 3 years or so, and I have seen multiple articles suspecting a double acting in certain capacities, with side by sides of Putin and "Vlad". I found this reporting credibly speculative, and I felt that I could reliably and consistently distinguish "Vlad" from Putin, particularly over time.
There is a problem of course: if "Vlad" exists, how can we be sure any particular Putin photo is actually of Putin?
Here is some evidence I've found, and I did not look very hard. I was reading https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12231813/Prepare-deeply-dangerous-unpredictable-Russia-Putin-replaced-says-security-expert.html and happened to notice "Vlad", and scrolled down further to find what appeared to be an older photo of Putin.
"Vlad": https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/06/25/15/72511321-12231813-Russian_President_Vladimir_Putin_on_state_television_today_said_-a-9_1687704720258.jpg
Putin: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/06/25/15/72483879-12231813-Out_of_jail_and_free_to_run_his_large_mercenary_army_Prigozhin_l-a-16_1687704764143.jpg
Note, I am not saying that these are great examples. If someone looked much harder, they could make a stronger case. "Vlad" to me looks softer and smoother, without the hardness or sharpness that I've come to associate with Putin's gaze.
My best guess at a narrative, if Vladimir Putin is in fact dead at this moment:
Putin probably has a double even before he gets sick. This may or may not be the current "Vlad". I think Putin realizes he has a likely terminal disease before the Ukraine invasion. As he gets sicker, the need for the double increases, both in terms of scheduling around illness and heightened scrutiny. Perhaps there is additional recruitment or cosmetic procedures. Putin invades Ukraine. Perhaps within a year of the invasion, he becomes incapacitated, and the double takes over, likely with the assistance of high level FSB.
It's unmistakeable, Vlad has less hair, and it's almost completely grey, that's sloppy doublesmanship.... Another hypothesis would be that Vlad is merely an older incarnation of the entity previously known as Putin, which itself once appeared as Vova, a cute child full of life. Are you the same person you were yesterday?
Also, a double doesn't make sense. If Putin is alive, he can credibly threaten, as well as lead, his inner circle. A double can't, while still making negotiations with the west much more difficult.
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Putin taking a break from the public isn't actually new. IIRC when other members of his inner circle had issues with Kadyrov (who then
fledwent to Dubai for a bit) he took his sweet time coming out despite Kadyrov clearly trying to feel him out and get his attention via social media.It has precedent.
EDIT: Looked it up to confirm I wasn't crazy, it was in 2015 after the murder of Nemtsov.
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So…how does this make any more sense? Looks like a bunch of extra complexity—coordination, secrecy, motivation—for no actual benefit. It doesn’t explain any of Wagner’s actions, let alone the MoD.
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I think storytellers in general have always been very fond of “the king is actually dead” tropes (list) because they serve to make things interesting, but real life examples are very much rare.
The big problem is that the inner circle who actually do encounter and know the leader personally (and who would therefore know he was dead) also stand to benefit the most from his death, and so are the least likely to maintain the veil of secrecy.
Putin’s death is a great opportunity for Medvedev or whoever else to clean house, declare the invasion a mistake made by idiots, and to focus on the old pastime of personal enrichment and kleptocracy. For nobody in the inner circle to do it would take the genuine and sincere ideological commitment to the Ukrainian war as a national project that I suspect is lacking in the Kremlin.
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No, sorry. You can't simulate the voice and little mannerisms he had and still has, quite clearly. Maybe it's not as clear if you don't speak russian natively, but he has quite a distinctive voice and the way of speaking. And I don't have any internal protests against discussing this theory seriously even though it sounds ridiculous. It is in fact ridiculous unfortunately.
Not even arguing about his doubles, it's irrelevant.
I don't think Putin is dead and has a body double, but ML could simulate those voices and mannerisms (certainly in audio, video is harder). Compare to the tom cruise lookalike who used ML to make it more convincing. edit: Yeah, I agree with below comment, also I'm pretty sure there are things like phone camera recordings of him
I'm sure it can be done, but his talks aren't rare and often they're taken with other people in various natural situations. So while it's not completely eliminating the scenario the op is talking about, it reduces the plausibility of that theory to something similar to the flat earth.
Worth noting that the body double theory is much more plausible, not to the level when I personally think it's likely, but there's a lot of "research" done there by various autistic people (anons mostly to my knowledge, also by Ukrainian low-iq propaganda outlets understandably).
This theory is orders of magnitudes more probable than the flat earth, there is no comparison.
In fact, Putin himself said they considered to use doubles at the start of his presidency:
https://meduza.io/short/2020/02/27/putin-skazal-chto-on-nastoyaschiy-udmurta-i-banketnogo-ne-suschestvuet
I was saying that about the theory that the real Putin is dead. The theory that Putin has doubles is indeed much more plausible, as i was saying.
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This conspiracy theory is very popular in Russia. In fact, it posits not that there is a single double, but that there are several: "The banqueting one" ("Банкетный"), "the Udmurt", "the Talking One" ("Говорун"). It's a fun theory, but the Western intelligence services would have known (as they knew about Prigozhin preparing his putsch even though Russian services completely missed it). And they would have leaked this, I think.
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