Russian leader Vladimir Putin entered the war with Ukraine by striking the country on February 24, 2022. A date which marks the invasion by Russian forces of the country led since 2019 by Volodymyr Zelensky. In this conflict which keeps the world on alert, the personality of the President of the Russian Federation raises more questions than ever. If his shirtless photos had already challenged, François Hourmant, lecturer in political science at the University of Angers and author of power and beauty answered questions from The Express on the image reflected by this politician who has been in power for more than two decades, as powerful as he is mysterious when it comes to his private life, which he hides behind his frozen face.
“With Vladimir Putin, it is really a form of masquerade virility, overplayed and overexposed“explains François Hourmant, speaking of the photographic staging of the soon to be seventy-year-old politician. But beyond the official photographs, his face without wrinkles raises questions. “There has been a lot of talk an abuse of cosmetic surgery, between Botox or liftingespecially after public appearances where his face was swollen…“, indicates The Express. The specialist François Hourmant reacts: “We speak of course in the conditional, because transparency is not the rule with him. In 2010, he appeared with a swollen face, no doubt due to Botox injections. He also appears to have suffered surgical operations on the forehead, eyelids or cheeks. This erased the wrinkles, but also froze her features.“
An unreadable face
This is how there was a “gradual shift towards monstrous double of himself. The result is quite ambivalent. He plays the card of an exacerbated virility, but at the same time, there is, in this botoxed face, with round cheeks, a form of paradoxical femininity.“, specifies the French expert. Cartoons had also surfaced on social networks at the time of the demonstrations against homophobic laws equating sexual minorities with paedocriminals; LGBT activists had thus disguised Putin. They were quickly recalled to order by the Kremlin, which threatened the perpetrators of these hijackings with serious sanctions.
With his swollen and impassive face, the one we say in a relationship with ex-gymnast Alina Kabaeva seems more expressionless than ever and impossible to read explains François Hourmant: “One can have the impression of dealing with a cold monster, devoid of all scruples.“But if this image of an implacable tyrant serves him, he must deal with rumors about a cortisone treatment and therefore a disease. “His health is all the more scrutinized when we know that Putin went so far as to modify the Russian Constitution in order to theoretically be able to remain in power until 2036…“, says the author.
An unverifiable state of health
Vladimir Putin did not appear in his best shape in the photos of his meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on November 23. Exactly last year, a political expert, Valery Solovei, told the British media The Sun that Vladimir Putin suffered from a Cancer. A news that had the effect of a bomb, reinforced by the rumor of an operation for abdominal cancer in February 2020. To this are added other concerns about the Parkinson disease that Solovei also confided, illustrated by his way of walking in a particular way with unilateral swinging of the arms…