Does Putin use body doubles?

It has become something of a fad to try to identify and quantify the body doubles of Vladimir Putin. There are even outlandish claims that the man himself is dead and has been replaced by one. But why the fascination?

It is hardly unusual for autocrats to have doubles – as a shield against assassination or simply as handy proxies to take on the more tedious and less important duties. Stalin had at least a couple; Panamanian strongman Manual Noriega apparently had no fewer than four. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was once photographed chatting with two of his identically-dressed doubles.

Certainly there is good reason to suppose Putin has at least one. His security has always been extravagantly paranoid, as demonstrated by the phalanxes of black-suited and ear-pieced presidential security service close protection officers. Having lived on Kutuzovsky Prospect, one of the massive highways leading into central Moscow along which his motorcade would speed to and from his suburban palace at Novo-Ogarevo, I can attest to the comprehensiveness of the precautions: from snipers taking up places on the rooftops to the checks made on manhole covers along the way.