A video clip labeled “Putin Trailer (2024)” has become viral on YouTube receiving more than 4 million views in just a month since its publication on November 2.
The YouTube trailer shows Russian President Vladimir Putin at the different stages of his life and career.
Most of the nearly 4,000 comments under the video are in the Russian language and express doubt that the clip represents a real movie.
At first glance, these doubts appear to be justified. Here is why:
The video is published by a newly established YouTube channel AIO Entertainment with just 6.5K subscribers.
The channel is not verified, which is uncommon for reputable movie production companies.
The Putin trailer is the only video the channel ever published.
Finally, the video is a combination of what seems to be documentary footage and CGI or AI-generated footage.
Thousands of YouTubers claimed the trailer was fake.
That claim is false.
Polygraph.info established that AIO Entertainment is a real production company in Poland. It is affiliated with Patryk Vega or Besaleel, a movie director whom the Hollywood Reporter described as the “Polish box office king” for his mega-hit gangster films.
While little known to international audiences, Vega is popular in Poland where his works have been recognized with numerous accolades including the prestigious National Hugo Television award.
In its June 2 news piece, the Hollywood Reporter announced Vega’s international debut – a first English-language political thriller based on Putin’s biography and drawing his psychological portrait.
Military.com – a United States military news and analysis website -- wrote that Besaleel’s upcoming movie Putin will reveal the links between the Russian president and organized mafia “as far back as 1990.”
Vega published a trailer for his Putin movie on X on November 2. It is identical to the video clip published on YouTube.
The trailer is grotesquely graphic.
One of its provocative scenes shows the actor playing Putin lying on the floor, shaking and naked, except for a set of diapers soiled with excrement. The scene apparently is based on rumors from December 2022 claiming that Putin fell downstairs and involuntarily defecated. At the time, the hashtag PutinPoopedHimself trended on social media for days.
There have also been unconfirmed reports citing intelligence sources that the Russian leader is suffering from colon cancer. The reports claimed that Putin’s bodyguards had to carry a poop bag during his travels, to collect his urine and fecal matter and bring it back to Moscow.
The Kremlin denied reports of Putin’s fall and illness, calling them “absolutely untrue.”
The AIO Entertainment trailer also includes a scene of the actor playing Putin in a winter field wearing a fur hat and carrying a paintball gun as he pursues young women who run in the snow wearing high heels, negligées, and bunny ears.
Besaleel described his movie as an “artistic protest against the Russian dictator and the war in Ukraine,” saying that the West fails to “comprehend Putin.”