Former UK intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove said he is “certain” that Russian President Vladimir Putin uses body doubles on some public occasions to reduce the risk of assassination.
In comments to The Sun, the former head of MI6 said the use of stand-ins would be a logical and “normal” security measure for a leader as high-profile and heavily targeted as Putin, particularly amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
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“There will be occasions, and it would depend on the circumstances, when he certainly, for security reasons, would have a body double,” Dearlove said.
He added that assassination has long been a feature of Russian political life and that the risks facing Putin have only increased since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“He would be a drone target for the Ukrainians as well, if they could know exactly where he was,” Dearlove said. “So, I think it’s quite logical that in certain circumstances… he uses a body double.”
Dearlove suggested that body doubles would not be used in close-contact settings such as diplomatic meetings, where deception would be difficult to sustain. Instead, he said, stand-ins would more likely appear during public, outdoor or loosely controlled events.
“But let’s say someone is walking around a car factory, or visiting a children’s playground – particularly if it’s an outdoor event and the press is at a distance,” he said.
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“These are the sort of occasions where Putin would use a body double,” he added.
Speculation over Putin’s use of doubles has circulated for years, alongside persistent rumors about his health. The Kremlin has consistently dismissed such claims as conspiracy theories, insisting that Putin remains fully visible and in control.
Ukrainian reports on Putin’s body doubles
However, Ukrainian security services have repeatedly alleged that multiple men resembling Putin in build, gait and facial structure have been trained to appear in his place.
Western officials and security experts have also pointed to increasingly choreographed public appearances and tighter security protocols around the Russian leader.
In 2023, Japan’s TBS television network conducted an AI-assisted analysis of Putin’s public appearances, focusing on facial recognition and body movements.
The network concluded that Putin appeared to personally attend that year’s Victory Day parade in Moscow, but suggested a different individual may have inspected the Crimean Bridge months earlier. The AI analysis found only a 53% match between the two appearances.
According to TBS, a visit to Mariupol produced a 40% match, while images from Crimea showed a likeness score of just 18%, leading experts to conclude there was a high probability that at least two body doubles were involved.
In late October 2022, then-head of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence (HUR, Kyrylo Budanov said that Putin was using body doubles who had undergone plastic surgery.
“It is usual practice now. We know specifically about three people who keep appearing, but how many there are, we don’t know. They all had plastic surgery to look alike,” Budanov said.
“The one thing that gives them away is their height. It’s visible in videos and pictures. Also gesturing, body language and earlobes, since they are unique for every person,” he added.
Budanov had previously linked the alleged use of body doubles to efforts to conceal Putin’s health problems.
In August 2022, he said lookalikes were being deployed during public appearances to mask medical issues that had circulated widely on social media, though those claims were dismissed by Western analysts and US officials.
In April 2023, Ukrainian officials again suggested that a body double was used during a highly publicized Kremlin-organized visit to Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory.
Then-National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov described the individual shown on Russian state television visiting Mariupol in March 2023 and occupied parts of Ukraine’s Kherson region in April as “an ordinary doppelganger.”
“There was no Putin there. This is a well-known thing. In order to communicate with the real Putin, you have to spend at least 10-14 days in quarantine,” Danilov said.
He did not provide evidence to support his claim, and the Kremlin has consistently declined to comment on whether body doubles are used to stand in for the Russian leader.
Body doubles through modern history
The alleged use of body doubles by authoritarian leaders is not unprecedented.
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was widely believed by US military officials to have relied on multiple body doubles, prompting then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to publicly confirm Hussein’s capture in 2003.
“Knowing that his doubles had used plastic surgery and could very well have done duplicate tattoos and bullet holes and various things [like] moles that would make it appear they were Saddam Hussein, the decision was made to have him publicly identified,” Rumsfeld said during a Pentagon briefing in 2004.
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was also known to employ decoys, including one reportedly recruited to attend banquets and meetings on his behalf.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is likewise believed to use lookalikes to reduce assassination risks, with international media publishing footage in 2017 showing him appearing alongside suspected decoys.
Cuba’s Fidel Castro also relied on body doubles, using doppelgangers both during periods of illness and as decoys to evade what Cuban authorities have claimed were more than 600 assassination attempts.
British leaders have likewise employed stand-ins, primarily for wartime deception and propaganda.
During World War II, former Prime Minister Winston Churchill used a double to record radio broadcasts when he was unable to attend studio sessions. Actor Norman Shelley is known to have delivered the famous line, “We shall fight them on the beaches,” recreating speeches Churchill had already given in Parliament.
British intelligence also deployed deception tactics during the war, with MI5 using a soldier closely resembling Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery to mislead German forces ahead of the Normandy invasion.
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