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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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Vladimir Putin's adversaries would acknowledge that the Russian leader is unlikely to turn the other cheek, which social media users have said looked decidedly swollen in a video that has gone viral.
Putin was greeted at the airport in Astana on Thursday by Kazakhstan's president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. While there are likely to be conversation fillers when the leaders hold talks, there is speculation that other kinds of fillers might be responsible for the current state of the Russian president's visage.
"What's up with Putin's cheeks?" asked the post that pulled no punches from Ukrainian internal affairs adviser, Anton Gerashchenko, next to a clip of the Russian leader addressing an audience while seated.
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The video, which as of Thursday, had received nearly 1 million views, only lasts for four seconds and while it has a Kremlin watermark in the top right-hand corner, it is unclear when it was taken.
In a follow-up post, Gerashchenko shared another video of Putin addressing a meeting during his visit to Kazakhstan in which he "had a hard time pronouncing the name of the president."
"This is not the first time he misspoke the name of a country's leader," said Gerashchenko, "lack of respect or his new cheeks influencing Putin's enunciation?
Gerashchenko's first video prompted a thread in which one user said, "by the look of the small bruise above cheek, this is fresh filler. I wonder what he really looks like without all the cosmetic enhancements?"
Another said there had been an "injection to lift and fill them out. On an actor."
That referred to rumors that Putin's appearance was evidence that he was employing a body double. Another user compared a still from the viral video with other images of Putin, describing how there were differences "in the shape of his head, the contours in and shape of his ears, the slope in his nose."
Ukrainian military's Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) representative Andriy Yusov told Radio NV on November 5 that it had "reliable information" that Putin used body doubles, despite strong denials from Moscow's presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
"When the official Kremlin spokesmen repeatedly deny the existence of Putin's doubles, the opposite conclusion becomes more plausible," said Yusov, according to the outlet New Voice of Ukraine.
It comes amid questions about Putin's health which have been swirling since the start of his invasion of Ukraine. Peskov responded to social media reports that the Russian leader had died following a cardiac arrest, saying that "everything was fine with him."
Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin for comment.
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