Fact Check: Does Video Show 'Putin's Double' Fighting on Ukraine Frontline?

A video on social media has begun circulating, which appears to show Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking to a person behind the camera while wearing a Russian soldier's uniform.

The video has recently garnered more than 80,000 views since being posted on October 12 on Twitter.

Some immediately dismissed it as a fake video, including the Twitter user who posted the video, while others were skeptical of Putin's desire to personally take part in his "special military operation."

With many conflicts in the modern-age, fakes, doctored videos and out of context clips can quickly spread on social media. And increasingly, deepfake technology is becoming yet another powerful tool in the misinformation agents' arsenals.

The Claim

Twitter user Leylabaku1996 posted the video, accompanying it with a joking caption.

"Putin's double in the army. AFU, if you take him prisoner, do not celebrate. It's not him," the Twitter user wrote.

Some social media users speculated the video was a deepfake alteration of the original footage; others questioned whether Putin himself or a look-alike may have popped up on the Ukraine frontlines.

The Facts

The video is indeed a deepfake, with Vladimir Putin's face superimposed on a Russian soldier.

In the video, the recruit is asked in Russian: "Why is the 83rd brigade so underfed?"

The soldier in the video then says, in what appears to be a fairly convincing impression of Putin's voice and notoriously demagogic style:

"You know, Sergey, I've addressed this issue before, and will say it again, if we only look at the 83rd brigade, we are not seeing the full picture across the Russian Airborne forces."

While the person speaking may appear to have Putin's voice and face, the line where Putin's facial features were clearly overlaid on top of another face is quite visible in a close up, as is typically the case with poor quality deepfakes.

In addition to this, the soldiers' physical features and frame do not match that of the Russian president.

More importantly, as Newsweek discovered, the video has also been circulating on social media well before Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, further dismissing the idea that Putin or a look-alike could be on the frontlines in Ukraine now.

The same video was posted on 19 January 2021 on Facebook. Several versions of the deepfake are available on YouTube and VK, the Russian social media platform, though the original clip that they reference appears to have been removed from the platform.

Furthermore, Newsweek has been able to establish the original clip, which was used to construct the deepfake. Further predating the Facebook clip, it is also available on the video-sharing website Veoh.

In this clip, we can see the real face of the person, who is indeed impersonating Putin, thus making it more effective to superimpose the deepfake graphics with the Russian president's face (though the end result is still—as many have pointed out—not entirely convincing).

As Newsweek has reported in the past, deepfake technology allows, among other things, to swap one person's face for another's. This is often done so people can be shown doing and saying things they didn't say or do.

Making these videos is also relatively easy, and can be done using free software.

While examples such as the one above are frivolous and low-budget efforts, typically for the purpose of humor or satire, a more sophisticated approach poses a significant threat from the point of view of political discourse and accompanying misinformation.

"It's not hard to imagine this technology's being used to smear politicians, create counterfeit revenge porn or frame people for crimes," The New York Times warned in 2018. "Lawmakers have already begun to worry about how deepfakes could be used for political sabotage and propaganda."

The Ruling

False.

The video was initially posted online in 2021, predating the 2022 Ukraine conflict.

The video is a deepfake, which uses an older clip that shows a Russian soldier (likely in Eastern Ukraine) impersonating Putin.

This edited version simply superimposes Putin's features over the soldier's face to help bolster the effect.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek