Sexy Putin is second best
2008-09-05 11:59
Moscow - He single-handedly saved a TV crew from the jaws of a tiger. He flexed his muscles in front of the cameras in Siberia. He cuts a dash on the ski slopes.
A former president, he is Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, but not quite Russia's sexiest politician. At least, that is, according to Russia's Sex & the City magazine.
In its September "Sexy Rating" list, the glamour magazine ranks who it considers the 20 sexiest Russian politicians. At the top is Boris Nemtsov, a former leader of opposition party Union of the Right Forces now viewed by many as a spent force.
It is rare that Putin loses out at home. A winner abroad - selected as Time's person of the year in 2007, and Vanity Fair's most powerful and influential figure of the year this month - Putin courts widespread popularity at home, having restored a sense of national pride and stability after the difficult post-Soviet years of Boris Yeltsin's rule.
"This is good news ... but I don't take it too seriously," said Nemtsov, who is pictured sitting on a bed, barefoot and dressed in a grey silk shirt and chinos. Although greying at the temples, that doesn't seem to put the voters off.
Responding to a query on how Putin might feel at being pushed into second place, Nemtsov said, "I don't know and I don't care. But he has unlimited opportunities to overturn my result. Maybe this comes as an unpleasant surprise for him, but I guess he has other problems right now."
'Putin is way better than Nemtsov'
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin lawmaker, said he was taken aback by the result.
"Putin is way better than Nemtsov," he said. "He's one of the sexiest politicians in the world." His looks may be average, he conceded, but his "decisive, harsh and unbending" character makes him extremely attractive.
Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov laughed in an embarrassed fashion, and said it was hard for him to comment.
The magazine's online blog - which opens the voting up to the general public - shows a rather different picture, giving Putin a narrow lead over Ilya Yashin, who leads opposition party Yabloko's youth movement. Former Economy Minister German Gref comes in at third, while four of the lesser-known entries garner no votes at all.
A black belt in judo and an accomplished skier, ex-KGB spy Putin has been snapped in an array of macho shots, from flying a fighter jet to strutting his stuff on a nuclear submarine.
Within days of the publication of photos last summer - where a bare-chested Putin was snapped fishing, horse riding and off-roading in a sport utility vehicle - the then-president was claimed by some as a gay icon, and local newspapers received a flood of excited letters on their websites from admiring women.
In his most recent escapade this August, Putin "saved" a TV crew from a gory death at the hands of a tiger, shooting it in the nick of time with a tranquiliser gun in Ussuriland.
- AP