Get you up to speed: Putin appears at scaled-back Victory Day parade amid health concerns
Vladimir Putin was spotted at a scaled-back Victory Day parade in Moscow, which has historically featured large military displays. Reports suggest that Putin has begun to use Botox ‘heavily’ amid concerns for his health, particularly following observations of his puffy and swollen face.
Vladimir Putin’s recent appearance at the scaled-back Victory Day parade in Moscow prompted concerns regarding his health, with Ukrainian commentator Anton Gerashchenko joking that sanctions may have impacted the country’s Botox supply. Reports from 2022 indicated that Putin had begun using Botox “heavily” amidst worries about his health, with speculation from an FSB officer suggesting he may have cancer and only “two to three years to stay alive.”
Vladimir Putin’s appearance at the scaled-back Victory Day parade in Moscow has raised concerns over his health and has led commentators to suggest he is increasingly losing power. Reports from inside the Kremlin indicate that Putin has begun using Botox heavily, amidst unconfirmed claims of his deteriorating health.
Putin appears at victory parade with ‘swollen’ face amid health fears | News World
The leader’s face appeared puffy and swollen at the parade (Picture: east2west)
Vladimir Putin’s puffy face and swollen cheeks saw a commentator question whether Russian sanctions had affected the country’s Botox supply.
The Russian president was spotted out in public for a Victory Day parade in Moscow over the weekend.
But Putin was branded a ‘deeply frightened, ageing dictator’, with his appearance triggering fears over his health.
Ukrainian commentator Anton Gerashchenko pointed to one unflattering image of the 73-year-old’s swollen cheeks, joking: ‘The face of a ‘victor’ and the leader of a ‘superpower’.
‘It seems sanctions have even reached Putin’s Botox.’
His lopsided face, which has been compared to ‘melting wax’, has been cause for concern among both supporters and critics.
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In 2022, reports from inside the Kremlin said Putin had begun to use Botox ‘heavily’ amid concerns for his health.
Unconfirmed reports which resurfaced this year have suggested the leader has cancer, with an FSB officer claiming he had ‘no more than two to three years to stay alive’.
Crimean Wind said: ‘History shows that many dictators visibly aged before the fall of their regime or their death. Scientists link this to chronic stress, paranoid fear of losing power, and isolation, which accelerate the body’s ageing.’
Putin’s appearance has spurred worry (Picture: east2west)
Normally, Russia’s Victory Day parade is a large fanfare event featuring tanks, nuclear warheads and thousands of soldiers marching through the capital.
This year’s celebration was scaled back amid fears of retaliatory attacks by Ukraine. Some commentators suggest the smaller event shows Putin is losing his power.
Another Ukrainian commentator, Alexey Kopytko, said: ‘At the parade, the centre of attention was not the leader of a superpower, but a tired old man with shifty eyes whom they still tolerate. And he senses it.
‘Either Putin himself is afraid, or he’s being wound up and intimidated this way — which causes him to become fearful and paranoid.’
The parade, which commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, is Russia’s largest military holiday.
The Soviet Union lost 27million people in 1941-45 in what it calls the Great Patriotic War, an enormous sacrifice that left a deep scar in the national psyche and remains a rare point of consensus in the nation’s divisive history under Communist rule.
Victory Day parades on Red Square have involved a broad array of heavy weapons – from armoured vehicles to nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles – every year since 2008.
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