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Vladimir Putin casts online vote using unlicensed Windows on an American Dell PC - 'Activate Windows' watermark visible in official Kremlin clip, uses foreign Dell PC despite Russian tech mandate
technology | by /u/MarvelsGrantMan136 | 111 comments | 2026-09-20T10:33:49+00:00 Central
Comments
| /u/invyros As for Putin's computer skills, it looks like his interactions with the online voting forms are largely being hampered because he can't see properly, rather than a hand-eye-coordination issue. There are uncomfortably pregnant pauses between the 73-year-old squinting and leaning into the screen and clicking the mouse. Literally the living embodiment of that grandma using a computer meme. |
| /u/FenPhen I guess glasses don't fit the strong man image. |
| /u/dmnksaman or some kind of eye degeneration that isn't fixable with glasses/contacts/surgery? he could well be losing his eyesight which would probably add to his paranoia. |
| /u/BruitNoise So that how his enemies accidentally keep falling off 50 story buildings. They will say those people had vision problems, but he can see clearly and totally cool. |
| /u/Diz7 Turns out Optometrists in Russia always take the penthouse suite for their offices. |
| /u/Myxine We actually don't want him more paranoid while he has control of nukes, I think. |
| /u/Eisenhorn_UK I dunno. Maybe if he can't read the launch-codes he can't read them out...? |
| /u/roamingandy I'd prefer he sees everything all the way down when he finally gets his window exit. Ideally the faces of all the people he's had killed and tortured. |
| /u/YamDankies Defenestration would be ironic. |
| /u/SenatorWhatsHisName Everyone knows being able to see properly is gay. |
| /u/Freenore You've hit the nail on the head. Fiona Hill, an adviser on Russian affairs to Presidents, met him several times in the 2000s and 10s and saw that he has very poor eyesight. He had his memos and documents printed in very large font size. So large that it was legible to her from a distance. Glasses should be obvious for him, but it doesn't fit the persona he wants to have. |
| /u/Dependent_Rain_4800 It is 'needs to have'. There is no choice with people like that. There are no conscious decisions anymore. It's pure evil in control. |
| /u/machwulf His staff has avoided giving CRUCIAL updates from the front lines: for fear of being disappeared. They'd already HAVE a language to describe the fault with the air or fog.. |
| /u/squeeby Neither does looking like a vole |
| /u/Dependent_Rain_4800 I can confirm this. My narc father needs glasses, tried once and then threw them in the trash. It's all about the image. |
| /u/screwcork313 He needs less narcotics, more narc optics. |
| /u/Logical_Welder3467 he could get lens inserted if he trust the doctor |
| /u/apathy420 I wish he would click on one of those links and get the "thank you for calling windows support this is Chris. You have a virus on your machine and the hackers are stealing your info. Please go to your local store and get 5 $500 google play cards and we can fix the issue" Or better yet Putin falls for a romance scam involving an oil rig worker and sends millions to some dude in Nigeria |
| /u/StardragonGER Dude ist notoriously paranoid. The one thing we can't realistically hope for is him being scammed ( except for by his advisors) |
| /u/emlgsh Super paranoid "my neighbors are all secret terrorists and drug-lords who sneak into my house while I sleep to move around my precious accumulated junk to make me think they're stealing old copies of National Geographic" elder types are the first to accept blithely that "Bill Microsoft" is on the other end of that scam website/email and they should definitely give him remote computer access and all their banking information. |
| /u/I_see_farts Putin getting a scareware screen where it locks your computer then starts yelling at you would be amazing. |
| /u/KayLovesPurple He's what, 73? The odds of him being able to see without glasses are very slim (though I would have expected he had contacts instead). |
| /u/adenosine-5 uncomfortably pregnant pauses Is this like a... normal... expression in English? |
| /u/Xenuite "Pregnant pause" is a normal term in English, though I don't see it used as much anymore. |
| /u/awesomefutureperfect I think the kids are saying "uncomfortably gregnant ahhh pause." |
| /u/Mojozilla Excuse me, it is "pregernet". Fixed it for you 🤭 |
| /u/chameleon_olive "comfyless pr*gnant af pause 💯💯💯🤣🤣🤣🤪🤪🤪 on god finna 6 7" |
| /u/k1nd3rwag3n Yeah it is. Pregnant can mean "full of meaning". But it is rarely used I think. |
| /u/GlennBecksChalkboard It's more or less common in German as well to call something "bedeutungsschwanger" (Bedeutung = meaning, schwanger = pregnant). |
| /u/k1nd3rwag3n Yeah, I'm German as well and had the same thought. |
| /u/MrPuddington2 It is short for "pregnant with meaning". Which peaked in the 19th century, but it is still in common usage. The contraction "pregnant pause" is a recent trend. |
| /u/Vano_Kayaba He even said thank you to the PC |
| /u/fuzzyboris Wait. You don't do that? |
| /u/Portugal_Stronk He doesn't want to piss off the basilisk. |
| /u/alppu Imagine if his computer skills were better and he spent his spare time being a bad commander on r/hoi4 instead of real life. |
| /u/TheLexikitty I'm legally blind - he could just press Windows and + for Windows Magnifier. Or Windows + U to enable Narrator. Not that I want him to figure this out, but it is...pretty easy to use. |
| /u/ExactLocation1 "In a final gesture of resistance to American dominance, Putin declines to activate Windows." |
| /u/oskich What about his WinRAR-licence? |
| /u/akuma-i It was created by a Russian programmer. Putin bought it several times |
| /u/tu_tu_tu But RARlab is a German company. So his licenses was likely refunded. |
| /u/slappadabass44 30 day trial lasting years. Almost like a certain 3 day special operation... |
| /u/JureSimich Is this some WinRar joke I'm too 7ZIP to understand? |
| /u/Xenuite WinRAR is shareware, and would constantly beg you to buy a license after a certain time. Most people just ignored it. |
| /u/bokmcdok I don't think anyone in Russia has an activated version of Windows. |
| /u/robotsknowwhereilive In mother Russia the software activates you. |
| /u/notoriginal123456 Wait until McAfee pops ups for him. |
| /u/ultimatequestion7 I immediately pictured this as a Far Side comic |
| /u/Algrinder Never in a million years would I have thought that Putin and I have something in common. |
| /u/Claptown420 You're actually more similar than dissimilar |
| /u/za72 He also has an enlarged prostate?! |
| /u/JimTheSaint Only one way to find out |
| /u/za72 I asked him, now I'm schedule to be thrown out a window next Tuesday |
| /u/Voodoocookie If it's windows 3.1, you'll be alright. |
| /u/Bemxuu It's Windows 98. Anything launched into it will freeze for quite a while, enough time to correct the trajectory. |
| /u/bvimo Quickly install Norton Crashguard, you'll be fine. |
| /u/Canerbry Ahh, Windows 98. The best version of Windows since Windows 95. |
| /u/8evolutions like a grapefruit, bro |
| /u/FatiguedShrimp They are both generally bipedal and omnivorous. |
| /u/eraptic He also hasn't activated WinRAR? |
| /u/Successful-Ad-9634 Most Russians use Linux because they are afraid of crashing out of Windows. |
| /u/shutyourkidup In Soviet Russia, Windows crashes you! |
| /u/BicycleWhisper If I had two upvotes |
| /u/Shadowtirs Everything about this is so perfectly Russian. |
| /u/socratic-meth Didn't he hear, 2026 is the year of desktop Linux |
| /u/oskich The Russian government have their own Linux distro -> Astra Linux 🐧 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_Linux |
| /u/OEAXTAIL_SOUP I prefer Red Star myself (love that frutiger aero meets juche aesthetic) but to be fair, this looks more functional :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS |
| /u/Algrinder He didn't choose Linux because even Putin apparently prefers an operating system with fewer freedoms. Lmao |
| /u/helloLeoDiCaprio But he's should look up to Linus Torvalds. He is a benevolent dictator for life. I guess the benevolent was the hard sell. |
| /u/SinisterCheese I been hearing that the current year is the year of linux for over a decade. And I'm sure I'll hear it for a decade more. |
| /u/TheGloomyWoodpecker I'm assuming you mean year of Linux on the desktop. Cause it's literally everywhere else. |
| /u/oskich With Proton working so well with Steam games/apps and Microsoft making millions of PCs "obsolete" by retiring Windows 10 it might actually happen. France and Germany are phasing out MS Office in favor of open-source alternatives for their government business. |
| /u/OEAXTAIL_SOUP This is it comrade. This is the year of Linux on the desktop. |
| /u/burning_iceman It's meme/joke. You will continue hearing it regardless of the reality. But Linux is continuously taking market share. |
| /u/dezradeath There are dozens of us! |
| /u/ziptofaf To be fair - 10 years ago according to Steam Hardware Survey Linux popularity was at 0.83%. Today it's 3.9%. So 4.6x increase. So it is sloooowly crawling there. Admittedly best advocate towards Linux is Microsoft. Not only does most of their infra run on it, they also make sure to break every feature in their own OS to make the transition as desirable as possible. So that's by far the largest contributor to the Linux Desktop initiative, they pour billions of dollars to make it happen. |
| /u/sovietarmyfan Imagine the FSB observing western social media reaction to this video. Intelligence worker: Sir, we've observed what people on social media say about Putin's latest video. Officer: Great! And, what are they saying this time? "It's Russian propaganda" "Putin is voting for himself"? Intelligence worker: No sir. They're joking about Putin using a unlicensed copy of Windows. |
| /u/roamingandy He's probably going to play Sims 4 afterwards. |
| /u/Running-In-The-Dark I don't think even he can afford all the dlcs |
| /u/zerot0n1n " It also reveals that some former Ukrainian territories will get to participate in this vote. " |
| /u/femboyisbestboy According to russia the occupied territories are already russian. |
| /u/UH1Phil According to Russia the unoccupied territories are, you guessed it, also Russian. |
| /u/MmmmMorphine Straight to j.. Russia |
| /u/Thrillhouse763 And remember the occupied territories overwhelmingly voted yes to become part of Russia. 102.4% voted Yes. |
| /u/roamingandy According to Putin they always were. Best not to ask his views on the Balkan countries either. |
| /u/WinnieFuckingPooh Old dictator forgot to take pills in the morning |
| /u/IntelArtiGen Tomshardware forgot to use a quotation punctuation mark here. |
| /u/jimbojetset35 Dell Monitor... can't see if the PC is Dell. |
| /u/jnd-cz It for sure isn't Russian. |
| /u/sa_Daani It looks like a dell all in one. Notice the mouse and keyboard going up towards it and the dvd drive on usb hub on the left. Edit: I need my glasses, clearly a usb hub not dvd drive |
| /u/it_fell_off_a_truck These are old monitors from 15 years ago, we have them at work still. They have a USB hub with built-in card reader. Probably good to have back then but this isn't an all-in-one. Yes, they are quite thick monitors compared to what we have now. |
| /u/ManiacalMartini Dell monitors commonly have a built-in hub and people often plug their keyboard and mouse into the monitor so they can run one USB cable to the PC from the monitor. |
| /u/notascoolaskeanu https://youtu.be/2wMIMQdF44I?si=FgUSU2gviDpn0Hl5 If anyone wants to see it actually happening |
| /u/Snowappletini I find it hilarious that it takes him that long and near the end he does that classic gesture of "The computer froze for a sec, am I about to fucking lose everything I just typed or is it going-oh it's going through. Nice, thanks." you see around people using government issued computers. |
| /u/WinnieFuckingPooh The appearance of free elections in a country ruled by a dictator |
| /u/z3n777 nothing says sovereign digital independence like a dell running an unactivated american copy of windows while asking everyone to trust the vote. |
| /u/takesthebiscuit He probably downloaded a car! |
| /u/RR321 And you think there is actual voting in Russia? |
| /u/vigbiorn Of course there is, and this picture shows 95% of them |
| /u/roamingandy Absolutely. Dictators love elections. They use them to pretend that the people have a choice, or demonstrate that the people don't have a choice as a show of strength. They also use them to identify and track anyone who is brave enough to not pretend to be 100% in support of their rule. I suspect the US mid-terms will be used like this too. |
| /u/baithammer There is voting, the problem is no independent monitoring and your vote may be changed to go with the ticket. |
| /u/CriticalNovel22 Him not resting his hand on the mouse is giving "musician on stage but his instrument isn't plugged in vibes". That, and Russian democracy is a sham. |
| /u/Glass-Amount-9170 Kind of like Trump voting by mail |
| /u/collabskus All that is a conversation on its own but can we please talk about the bottom of the barrel El Cheapo keyboard and mouse? What is the point of being a billionaire dictator with all the resources of a nation arguably the size of a continent if you can't even have a decent mechanical keyboard and a wireless mouse. The knockoffs from China mainland are pretty good now and don't cost too much. |
| /u/KayLovesPurple He probably doesn't spend enough time in front of the computer for it to matter. |
| /u/Lord_of_Sword He's well known for not using computers or smart phones, he only uses them when he absolutely needs to. It's mainly performative and for propaganda reasons. This is a man who still uses pen and paper and old dumb phones for day to day stuff. |
| /u/Mal_Dun Tbf. If I would worked for the KGB so long and know how the Russian state uses these devices to spy on people, I probably also would stay away from electronics lol |
| /u/collabskus I tried to think but doesn't he and doesn't he... But yeah he probably has other people do all that stuff and this is more like a photo op. Reminds me of the conversation I had one time with a coworker when I said I I was a billionaire I would have a full on heated drive way so I would never have to shovel snow again. The snow would just melt and he just stared at me and said dude you wouldn't be shoveling driveways if you were a billionaire anyway. |
| /u/Chaotic-Catastrophe The video makes it clear he literally never uses a computer |
| /u/Eric_12345678 Who cares about the client if the server is a simple print("Putin: 99.5%")? |
| /u/jchasse I thought the US elections weren't till November ?!? |
| /u/captainmycaptn Activating windows is dangerous in Russia, you could fall from them |