Unconfirmed report says Russian President Vladimir Putin is dead.
According to a mysterious Russian Telegram channel called “General SVR” and Valery Solovey, a prominent Russian political analyst, Putin died on Thursday, Oct. 26.
So the big question is who is the man parading himself as Russia’s President?
Valery Solovey says the Putin we see now is thus actually his double, who, has been filling in for the sickly real Putin for several months.
Few Russian or Western analysts believe General SVR and Solovey (who some say are one and the same person). After all, they have no concrete evidence supporting their sensational claims.
They do provide remarkably detailed accounts of Putin’s supposed death that enhance their verisimilitude, but imaginative crackpots and secret police provocateurs would be expected to do the same.
The problem is that Solovey strikes one as anything but a crackpot or a dupe of the Federal Security Service. He has a biting sense of humor, speaks well, argues logically and generally comes across as the kind of professor every student would want.
Other than his claims regarding Putin’s death and the supposed exile of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the deceased head of the mercenary Wagner Group, to an island off the coast of Venezuela, his analyses of Russia’s internal politics are invariably smart and incisive.
So, if Solovey isn’t a madman or a puppet, he must be one of two remaining possibilities.
As a would-be opposition leader who may or may not really believe that Putin is dead, Solovey may be determined to sow confusion in the ranks of Russian elites and among ordinary Russians, leading them to wonder whether the great leader is still alive and to question whether the man claiming to be Putin really is Putin — thereby undermining his legitimacy.
With Russia’s presidential elections scheduled for March 2024, popular doubt about Putin’s health and existence can only complicate the Kremlin’s plans regarding just who should run and what margin of victory should there be.
Regardless of whether Putin is physically dead or alive, the brouhaha over his rumored death clearly shows that he’s in serious trouble.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians have read General SVR’s and Solovey’s claims. Many more are discussing them. Seeds of doubt about the “grandpa in the bunker,” as Putin’s critics call him, have been planted.
And just as the general and Solovey have no proof of Putin’s death, their critics have no proof of his life, as one can always claim that the man claiming to be the real Putin is really an apparition.
