Vladimir Putin is suspected of using a body double for public appearances, according to a special forces trained terrorism expert.
Rumours have been rife the Russian leader does not appear in person for months, as photos have shown him with a distorted chin among other anomalies.
Now SAS-trained Graham Yuill has added his own doubts to the chorus after seeing a number of recent photos of the warmonger.
Graham, who used his training in facial recognition when serving in Northern Ireland to identify terrorist suspects, told the Daily Record: “You can tell by just looking at the photograph of Putin that something is not quite right.
“Each person’s face has unique characteristics that can determine if he is real or fake.
“However the photographs last week of Putin in Ukraine do mot match all his facial characteristics.
"The hair, ears and eyes were perfect. But his nose, chin and the space between the nose and the lips - called the philtrum - were wrong.
“The people protecting him did not look like professional guards either.
“There was also not the normal high levels of security that you would normally see for such a visit such as an armoured vehicle.”
Graham, a private security consultant, recently published a best seller on the Salisbury novichok poisonings.
He joined the Royal Military Police in 1974 from school and then became part of the Lord Provost Company which provided armed escorts for senior military personnel in Northern Ireland during the troubles.
He also worked at Belfast International Airport - then called Aldergrove - spotting terrorist suspects arriving and leaving the country.
He added: “Recently, I carried out specialist security work with a Home Office approved company based in the centre of Glasgow.
“My job was to identify likenesses of people who had applied for visas to live in the UK.
“I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt after studying recent footage of Putin moving around Ukraine that he is using a body double because he is paranoid of being assassinated.
"The double is even trained to walk like him and may have had surgery on his ears.”
In the past Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler Fidel Castro and Field Marshal Montgomery have used body doubles.
It comes in the wake of speculation the Russian President’s only trip so far to newly-invaded territory in Mariupol, Ukraine was performed by a doppelgänger.
Putin is widely believed to have had regular plastic surgery as he has aged since first becoming acting president on the last day of 1999.
Rumours are rife that the warmonger's “understudies” - who have undergone plastic surgery to resemble him - are deployed increasingly as his health worsens amid rumours of cancer and early-stage Parkinson’s.
