Russian TV channel invites Trump and Maduro doppelgangers to comment on Trump and Maduro
AFP correspondent Maria Antonova has noted that the Russian state-owned channel Rossiya-24 occasionally broadcasts interviews with expert commentators who look suspiciously similar to world leaders.
The TV station invites these guests to discuss current events such as interference in Venezuelan politics and legal accusations against U.S. president Donald Trump. The expert invited to speak on Venezuela was Alexey Leonkov, an editor at the magazine Arsenal Otechestva. In its segment on Trump, the station posed questions to Edward Lozansky, the president of the American University of Moscow. Antonova pointed out that Leonkov is similar to Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro while Lozansky’s appearance is reminiscent of Donald Trump’s.
The resulting scenes on air are striking:
Alexey Leonkov on Nicolás Maduro
Rossiya-24
Edward Lozansky on Donald Trump
Rossiya-24
Meduza discovered that Leonkov has been invited to participate in the channel’s coverage on Venezuela on multiple occasions. He has also participated in segments on Syria and the Indo-Pakistani conflict. The visual similarity between Lozansky and Trump has long been a topic of interest among Russian social media users.
“I went back and forth for a while about whether the person in this photo is really the political scientist Edward Lozansky or whether it’s actually Trump.”
Andrey Malgin
Maxim Ivanov with reporting from Mikhail Zelensky
Translation by Hilah Kohen