FROM OUR SPY INSIDE THE KREMLIN

IT’S the assassin’s worst fear, the body double. Did he kill the target or someone who looks like the target?

Well, according to our man inside the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin has gone to extraordinary lengths to dissuade assassins, using methods which involve body doubles of body doubles, as well as his very long meeting table.

The President of the Russian Federation began with a single double, mostly to cover for him when he was on the town or out killing bears or fishing for sturgeon with his fingernails.

However, since 2014, and his falling out with the West, he has acquired more body doubles, in order to confuse enemies even more about where he is and what he up to. Sometimes just so he can have a nap or visit a mistress.

“As the situation grew more tense after the annexation of Crimea, this being Russia and full of strange deaths, those same body doubles began to get really scared, and so they hired body doubles to stand in for them,” says our man.

“Soon you had Putin body doubles everywhere. It got so confusing that even Putin found it hard at times to convince officials that he was the real president. Eventually, something had to give.

“He called in all the body doubles, there were hundreds of them it turned out, all on his payroll, some who didn’t even look like him, a few who were actually women. Hey, this is Russia remember. Anyway, they filled a hall.

“The President sat them down around his long table in groups and arranged a shift system. Then he ordered a false Kremlin built outside Moscow, to which foreign politicians and journalists and diplomats and Russians oligarchs could be taken to meet his doubles. They would be driven in cars with blacked out windows.

“This worked well for a while but the demand on this false Kremlin grew too large, so another was built near Volgograd, filled with doubles of the President. There are five now, and as his Ukraine war has become more and more contentious, Putin has increased his reliance on doubles. There are now multiple doubles of all his staff and ministers and civil servants. It’s crazy. I sometimes don’t know where I am. When Putin goes on a trip all these other Putins go on similar trips in case there’s a threat against him. The security services and the military are driven insane at times. But I think that’s part of the plan. It’s them he fears most.

“You can’t imagine the waste of food and petrol all this involves. The carbon footprint is enormous. Don’t tell Greta Thunberg.”