The Kremlin dismissed repeated claims that Vladimir Putin hired body doubles to cover for him in public appearances on Tuesday and disputed a story that the president was ill as Russia-Ukraine war rages on.

“Everything is fine with him, this is absolutely another fake,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about an unsourced report by a Russian Telegram channel, picked up by some Western media, that the president had suffered a serious health episode on Sunday evening.

When asked again about Putin’s body doubles, the spokesman chuckled and said that he didn’t.

“This belongs to the category of absurd information hoaxes that a whole series of media discuss with enviable tenacity. This evokes nothing but a smile,” Peskov said.

On October 7, Putin, a longtime “action man” and judo lover, turned 71. He keeps a busy schedule of meetings and public engagements, many of which are broadcast on television.

As part of his recent schedule, Putin visited China last week and made stops in two Russian towns on the way home.

Putin denied recurrent rumours that he uses body doubles in an interview from 2020, albeit he did admit that he had previously been offered the opportunity to do so due to security concerns.

The European Union enacted extensive sanctions on February 25, 2022, the day after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in an effort to make it plain to Moscow that the war would have serious repercussions.

The group has so far enacted 11 different penalty packages, and last week it said that it would try to close any gaps in the current laws. 

According to EU authorities, the penalties can last for many years.