Kremlin Attributes Odour Reports to a Double, Describing the President’s Own as Roses

By our Foreign Correspondent · Filed from Helsinki · September 12, 2026

The Kremlin press service issued a statement Saturday addressing eighteen months of reporting by foreign delegates about flatulence during closed sessions. The statement said the incidents were genuine, that they did not involve the President, and that they are the responsibility of a substitute who has since been reassigned.

“The President’s own are floral,” the statement reads. “Specifically roses. This has been the case since 2011 and is documented.”

The press service did not say by whom. Asked at a briefing to describe the documentation, a spokesman said it exists, that it is medical, and that the Russian Federation does not release the medical records of its head of state. He added that anyone present in the room would confirm it and declined to name anyone present in the room.

“What the delegates describe did happen. It was not him. He does not smell like that. He smells like roses.”

Three delegates who attended sessions in Sochi in 2024 and 2025 stood by their accounts Saturday. Two said the room had been small. One, a Finnish official, said he had assumed at the time that it was the building, and had adjusted that assumption over the following year for reasons he preferred not to give.

The substitute referred to in the statement was not named. A former protocol officer, reached in Riga, said the rotation is longstanding and organised by assignment rather than by resemblance: one for domestic ceremonial, one for anything held outdoors, one for long-haul travel. Asked which had covered the Sochi sessions, he said the third, and that the third has a condition, and that it is dietary.

The statement, in summary

• The reported incidents occurred.
• They are attributed to a substitute, who has been reassigned to duties described as “outdoor.”
• The President’s own are floral, specifically roses, and have been since 2011.
• Supporting medical documentation exists and will not be released.
• No further questions on the matter will be taken, a position the press service has reiterated on four occasions since.

A parfumier at a house in Grasse, asked whether the claim was physiologically possible, said that diet influences body odour, that rose is a composite of several hundred aromatic compounds, and that she had been called by eleven newspapers and would be raising her consulting rate on Monday.

Western intelligence services declined to comment. One European service said it had been aware of the rotation for some years and considered it routine. Asked whether any assessment had been made of the President’s personal scent, an official said there had not, and that resources are finite.

State television covered the statement for forty seconds without repeating its contents, describing it as a clarification regarding scheduling. A Moscow daily printed the full text on page eleven beneath a headline about laundry logistics.

The State Department was asked whether it had a position. A spokeswoman said the department does not characterise the personal attributes of foreign leaders. Asked a follow-up about the number of foreign leaders involved, she said the department negotiates with governments.