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So when the 58-year-old prime minister turned up at a news conference in Ukraine on Wednesday with what appeared to be a black eye, swollen and caked in makeup, rumors started flying. Was it a judo session gone too far? Bruising from plastic surgery? Or marital troubles?
"The journalists are wrong -- it was probably just the lighting. But it's true that the prime minister is tired. Lately, he has been working a great deal and is constantly on the road," Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the Russian news website Gazeta.ru, according to The Moscow Times.
But that didn't stop the theories swirling among journalists who attended Wednesday's event in Kiev. They noted that Putin's mood seemed sour, the news conference was cut short and the dinner scheduled for afterward was canceled.
Vladimir Putin, Macho Man
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin raised eyebrows Wednesday when he turned up at a news conference in Ukraine with what appeared to be a black eye. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, blamed bad lighting and said the prime minister was tired.
Putin has long sought to portray himself as a rugged man of adventure. Here, he holds a crossbow as he floats in a rubber boat on Aug.25 while studying gray whales off the Kamchatka Peninsula. He used the weapon as he helped researchers tag and collect skin samples from the mammals.
Putin sits in a Be-200 aircraft during a firefighting flight in the Ryazan province on Aug. 10. The ex-Russian president pushed a button to dump 24 tons of water on a wildfire in Ryazan, and the pilot credited him with a direct hit.
Putin seems to relish outdoor adventures -- and being photographed while on them. This April 29 photo shows Putin, second from right, helping scientists measure a polar bear on an Arctic island. Putin has expressed concern for the fate of polar bears threatened by climate change.
A former KGB agent, Putin found that his dedication to physical fitness resonated with the Russian public during his eight years as Russia's president. Here, he goes for a swim while vacationing in the mountains of Siberia on Aug. 3, 2009.
Putin, center, snaps fire wood across his knee during his Siberian vacation. He stepped down as Russia's president in 2008, but his duties as prime minister -- traveling, reaching out to the Russian people and keeping Russian business owners in line -- have kept him in the public eye.
Putin feeds a horse during the same vacation. The trip came just days after he traveled to the bottom of Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake, in a military submarine.
Putin isn't shy about displaying his athletic prowess. In this photo from 2009, Putin, a judo black belt, demonstrates his skills at a sports school in St. Petersburg. He has also released a DVD called "Let's Learn Judo With Vladimir Putin."
In August 2008, Putin was credited with saving a TV crew from an attack by a Siberian tiger. The tiger lunged at the crew during a visit to a reserve in Russia's Far East. Putin reportedly shot it with a tranquilizer gun. Here, he locks a collar with a satellite tracker onto the tiger.
Putin holds the tranquilizer gun that he used to stop the tiger. "Vladimir Putin not only managed to see the giant predator up close but also saved our television crew too," a presenter said on Russian television.
"Ukrainian, Russian and Western reporters after the press conference could talk about only one thing: Where did that black eye come from -- could it have been the result of some tough sparring?" wrote Andrei Kolesnikov, a veteran Putin watcher with one of Russia's most respected independent newspapers, Kommersant. "While it was carefully covered up, it was still visible to all," he wrote, according to The New York Times.
"He also had on his face a very noticeable swelling ... badly covered up with makeup," its report said.
A Ukrainian newspaper, Levy Bereg, had another theory. "Did Putin have a face-lift?" it asked in a headline, according to London's Guardian. The paper wondered whether Putin had plastic surgery, underwent a complicated dental procedure that left his face bruised or had an "unfortunate" judo fight.
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