In fact, the Russian president supposedly breathed his last on Thursday, Oct. 26. The Putin we see now is thus actually his double, who, Solovey claims, 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.
R&I ~ MJM