Ageing Vladimir Putin's eyesight now so bad he needs war scripts printed in enormous font
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Vladimir Putin has again been caught hiding his poor eyesight as he had trouble reading his own war script. The warring Russian dictator refuses to wear glasses, and so needs giant-sized print on his notes as he addresses the nation or issues orders to his ministers. Now 72, he has reportedly used facial plastic surgery for years to blur the telltale signs of ageing.
But his eyesight is evidently not as good as it was - and the ex-KGB spy is periodically snared when brief glimpses of his texts are shown in large bold fonts. Putin refuses to wear spectacles in public “in order not to spoil his image”, according to one report.
This week he was shown in a likely pre-recorded 52-second Kremlin video of an online meeting with officials on money allocated for occupied naval port Sevastopol in Crimea. Unusually, he put down his notes page by page showing the large text, in view of the camera. Only at the end did he seek to cover up the large script, gathering his papers in a way that hid the large writing.
Four years ago, a report in Top News said: “We can conclude that Putin does have problems with his vision, but [his officials] are simply carefully hiding it.” A Twitter post in 2019 highlighted that the problem is long-running. From the satirical account 'Darth Putin’, it read: “I'm not getting old. I don't need reading glasses. It's normal to print speeches in 72 point bold!!!” Putin has been in power as Russian president or prime minister for more than a quarter of a century.
