Three Russian politicians have the same name and the same face

 Three Russian politicians have the same name and the same face

The story takes place in the elections for a municipal seat in St. Petersburg, Russia. There, candidate Boris Vishnevsky was looking like a clear winner until one morning he finds his image next to those of his two rivals wallpapering the entire city. His rivals are also Boris Vishnevsky, and it would seem that they are the same person.

Put another way, at first glance it looks like Vishnevsky is running against two people who not only legally changed their names to his, but also borrowed his physical appearance to confuse voters.

What? Yes, and apparently it's nothing new that Russian opposition politicians are used to running against candidates with the same last name. In fact, it's a common tactic with the idea of derailing a few votes in close elections.

Local media reports say that Vishnevsky, a senior member of the liberal Yabloko party running for public office in a St. Petersburg district, already knew that two of his opponents had recently changed their names to "Boris Vishnevsky" to confuse voters. What he didn't know was that they had also stolen his physical appearance. As we see in the cover image, a district voting poster shows the three candidates side by side, and it's hard to tell them apart because they all look almost identical. 

As Vishnevsky (the real one) explained in an interview:

'I have never seen anything like this. All this is done to disorient voters, so that they confuse the fake with the real, and instead of the real Vishnevsky they vote for one of the fakes.

Double" (or triple) candidates often occur with the closeness of election cycles in Russia, a shady tactic that ensures votes are split between two namesake candidates, increasing another candidate's chances of winning.

In the case at hand, the previous name of the candidates who switched to Vishnevsky were Viktor Bykov and Alexei Shmelev. They clearly altered their physical appearance to match Vishnevsky's, and it is even noted that in the election images they may have resorted to some kind of digital editing software to get closer to the politician's appearance (Vishnevsky is the one with the tie).

Although the politician has been quick to brand the action as "political fraud", the truth is that he has little to do. Under Russian law, it is perfectly legal for political candidates to change their names to those of their opponents just a few months before an election.[OddityCentral]