Putin announced attacks against Ukraine on Thursday in the same suit he wore for his Monday speech, prompting speculation that his war declaration was pretaped
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Putin's attire during his war declaration on Thursday suggests his speech may have been pretaped.
Videos from Monday and Thursday appeared to show the Russian president wearing the same clothes.
The videos showed Putin wearing a black blazer with a white dress shirt and a maroon tie.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's attire during his Thursday war declaration suggests his speech may have been pretaped.
In a video that aired early Thursday in Russia, Putin said he would launch a "special military action" against Ukraine.
During a televised address on Monday, Putin appeared to wear the same outfit as he denounced Ukraine's sovereignty, argued that Ukraine was a creation of the Soviet Union, and announced military intervention in eastern Ukraine.
In both videos, Putin appeared to be sitting in the same spot at the same table, wearing the same outfit: a black blazer with a white dress shirt and a maroon tie.
The similar attire and location prompted speculation that the declaration of a military assault against Ukraine had been taped earlier.
Some analysts cited metadata from an official video as evidence that the address was pretaped. However, Aric Toler, an analyst with the publication Bellingcat, said that this was based on data from a different video and that the Kremlin video's data showed a creation date of February 24, leaving it unclear when the video was filmed.
Other elements of Russia's actions on Ukraine have been scrutinized over apparent timing discrepancies. Documents from separatist leaders in Luhansk and Donetsk requesting aid from Russia made public on Wednesday bore signatures from the day before.
The Kremlin also acknowledged that a dramatic Security Council meeting in Moscow this week about deciding whether to recognize the separatist regions as independent states had been recorded five hours before it was broadcast.
At an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council late on Wednesday, Ukraine's ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, delivered a searing response to Putin's action.
"About 48 minutes ago, your president declared war on Ukraine," Kyslytsya said to Russia's ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya.
Hours after Putin's declaration on Thursday, Ukrainian officials said the country was being targeted by airstrikes.
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