Viral Russian Leonardo DiCaprio lookalike sent to fight in war with Ukraine

7 October, 2024

Leonardo DiCaprio

A high-profile Russian lookalike of Leonardo DiCaprio has been enlisted to fight as part of the Russian war in Ukraine.

Roman Burtsev, 41, had secured a number of acting and advertising roles based on his close resemblance to the Hollywood star, 49, but in recent years his work had dwindled after Burtsev gained weight.

He lives at home with his mother in Podolsk, near Moscow, and has now been enlisted to fight with the Russian armed forces, as many unemployed Russian men have since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Burtsev had been between jobs since the pandemic, picking up work in marketplaces and hardware stores (via Metro).

Russian authorities raised the salaries of active soldiers following the invasion in a recruitment effort. According to a Reuters report earlier this year, Moscow residents that sign up to fight in Ukraine receive an initial downpayment of 1.9million rubles (£15,000), taking their annual pay in their first year of service to 5.2million rubles (£41,300). Metro reports that if Burtsev is killed in combat, his family could qualify for up to £99,000.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a major escalation of a war which began in 2014, and is now the largest conflict in Europe since the Second World War. In September, the Wall Street Journal reported that “roughly one million” people had been killed or wounded since the invasion.

Meanwhile, the real DiCaprio has been making headlines of his own this year, with Blood Diamond director Edward Zwick recalling finding him “shopping” through Victoria’s Secret catalogues, and SpongeBob SquarePants mocking him over his dating history during the Super Bowl.

The Killers Of The Flower Moon star also claimed recently that he turned Martin Scorsese onto the films of Studio Ghibli, while Kate Winslet recently discussed the “messy” experiencing of kissing her Titanic co-star, admitting that it “was not all it’s cracked up to be”.

DiCaprio is currently filming The Battle Of Baktan Cross, with writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Licorice Pizza) and co-stars Regina Hall, Sean Penn, Alana Haim and Benicio Del Toro.

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