The authorities in Ukraine claim that it was not Vladimir Putin who visited the front at Kherson and Luhansk this week, but a “doppelgänger”.

The Russian government released a video this week that appears to show Putin greeting soldiers in the Kherson and Luhansk regions. The video shows an apparently cheerful and carefree Putin jovially greeting soldiers, he is quite closely surrounded by people.

This is said to have been his second visit to the front since the invasion of Ukraine.

It has often been claimed that Putin uses one or more doppelgängers, who are sent around for various representation tasks that could potentially put him in danger.

BusinessInsider has carried out a review of the footage, without coming to a clear conclusion. They have, among other things, looked at details including the ears of the people in question.

It has previously been claimed that Putin’s most used doppelgänger looks somewhat younger, has a slightly rounder face, and generally appears “kinder” and more jovial. There are a number of films on YouTube that deal with the topic in a more or less credible way, and in some cases come to rather different conclusions.

In this case, it will be very difficult to say anything with certainty.

The Ukrainian authorities claim that it was not Putin himself, but precisely a doppelgänger, who visited Ukraine.

It was not the real Putin, said Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s National Security Council, in a television broadcast on Wednesday.

NTB-DPA reports on this story.