Conspiracy theories that Vladimir Putin has died and been replaced by body doubles are alight again after a Russian politician appeared to call the president by a completely different name — Pal Laich.
“Pal Laich, thank you very much. I have prepared a presentation,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev appeared to say to Putin in footage from a recent meeting in Moscow.
The clip was published by the Kremlin itself, but an official transcript from the meeting switched “Pal Laich” to Putin’s full name, “Vladimir Vladimirovich,” the Times of London reported.
Pro-Krelim newspaper Kommersant was even baffled by the moment, admitting “it seems that no one can explain what it was. Maybe he got overstressed. Maybe he wanted to say something about something, but he caught himself.”
And the puzzling detail has left some speculating the minister may have accidentally tipped the truth about Putin’s supposed use of body doubles — an unverified claim which has dogged him for years.
Theorists claim that Putin has at least three body doubles who often stand in for him, with people pointing out details like his ear shapes and height appearing to change over the years.
Body doubles being used by paranoid world leaders is not unheard of — Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein supposedly forced men to undergo plastic surgery to look more like him — with leaders sometimes using them to keep themselves safe from assassination.
Ukrainian intelligence has even backed the claims, saying Putin has three known body doubles and highlighting various physical characteristics that have supposedly changed over time.
“There are at least three people who periodically appear,” Ukraine’s then-head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said in 2022, according to the Times.
Some Putin theorists have even posited that the long-ruling president is in fact dead, and that a shadowy cabal inside the Russian government is using doubles to hide that while running the country themselves.
Putin himself admitted in 2020 that a body double plan had been presented to him decades ago, but that he decided against it.
And the theories haven’t held up to technology — with a 2024 analysis using photo software from the Russian opposition group Meduza finding a more than 99% chance that each image of Putin analyzed was in fact Putin.
Some also dismissed the “Pal Laich” video, saying it was clear Patrushev simply misspoke Putin’s name.
“Nope, not a double here,” Russian-born and anti-Putin YouTuber Vlad Vexler wrote on X. “He addresses Putin clearly with a clipped Vladimir Vladimirovich.”
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