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Putin 'not the sexiest politician'
Vladimir Putin's macho image has made him plenty of fans among Russian women - but according to one magazine, that doesn't quite make him the nation's sexiest politician.
- AP
- Published: 23:12 September 5, 2008
- In this August 15, 2007 file photo, Vladimir Putin, then Russian President, walks along the Khemchik River in the Tuva region of Siberia, Russia.
- Image Credit: AP
Moscow: He reportedly 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.
Vladimir Putin's macho image has made him plenty of fans among Russian women - but according to one magazine, that doesn't quite make him the nation's sexiest politician.
Sex & the City magazine's ranking of the nation's 20 sexiest politicians gives the top slot to Boris Nemtsov, a former opposition leader widely seen as a spent political force. Prime Minister Putin came in second.
"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.
Russia remains a country with limited press freedoms and carefully controlled images of its leadership - so it is unlikely an opposition figure could have pushed Putin into second place on weightier matters like leadership qualities.
Still, Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin lawmaker, said he was taken aback. "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 gave an embarrassed laugh when asked about the result - and said it was hard for him to comment.
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.
Last summer, photographs of a bare-chested Putin in Siberia prompted admiring women to flood local newspaper websites with excited letters.
Action man
In his most recent escapade, Putin last month was said to have saved a television crew from a gory death at the hands of a tiger, shooting it in the nick of time with a tranquiliser gun in Ussuriland.
Compiled from an anonymous poll among 20 Sex & the City female employees, most of them in their mid-30s, the results are sometimes surprising.
Eduard Limonov - an aging opposition figure who sports a tufted haircut and goatie - made the list at number 14. Married three times, his current partner is some 30 years his junior.
"Putin's just short - what's sexy about that?" laughed Limonov, before conceding that Putin's power gave him sex appeal.
Even Russia's highest office could not get Dmitry Medvedev into the top five, coming in seventh.
The magazine's blog is now allowing the public to weigh in - and readers have restored Putin to first place in the online poll.
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