Tadeusz Giczan, a London-based Belarussian journalist, first observed the oddity and on Saturday shared three photos where the woman was seen standing among various different crowds. In one, she was standing in a line-up of soldiers, then with sailors on a boat, and then with worshippers attending some sort of religious service.
"A soldier, a sailor, a devout Christian. God moves in a mysterious way," Giczan tweeted with a dryly tongue-in-cheek tone.
Replying to the tweet, CNN's correspondent Clarissa Ward wondered if she is simply an actor being used to fill out photos or if she has another reason to be in close proximity to Putin in different situations.
Ward wrote, "Who is she? A bodyguard? An actor? There are several other faces who appear in both photos on the right."
Meanwhile, Putin devoted his annual New Year's address on Saturday to rallying the Russian people behind his troops fighting in Ukraine and pledging victory over Ukrainian "neo-Nazis" and a West supposedly intent on "destroying Russia".
In a stern and combative recorded video message, broadcast on national television, Putin cast the war - which he calls a "special military operation" - as a near-existential fight for the future of Russia.
Its soldiers, he said, were fighting for "our motherland, truth and justice ... so that Russia's security can be guaranteed".
