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Putin sexy, sure, but not that sexy
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-06 08:38 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 Russian 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. "This is good news ... but I don't take it too seriously," Nemtsov said. 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." Sergei Markov, a 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 spokesman 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.
A black belt in judo and an accomplished skier, ex-KGB leader 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 - local newspapers received a flood of excited letters on their websites from admiring women. In his most recent escapade last month, Putin "saved" a TV crew from a gory death at the hands of a tiger, shooting it in the nick of time with a tranquilizer gun in Ussuriland. "Putin should be No 1," Katya, a 24-year old lawyer, said. "People have been saying he's the sexiest man in the country for years." Agencies |
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