Now you know what the RW wants.
Ian Traynor
Thursday November 30, 2000
The Guardian
Running at 70% in the opinion polls, with a supine parliament about to put him beyond the reach of the law, and spraying foreign policy initiatives into the vacuum left by America's political uncertainty, President Vladimir Putin could be forgiven for feeling that fortune is smiling on him.
As he approaches the one-year mark in the Kremlin, Mr Putin's good fortune was compounded this week when the president of Russia's judo federation, Vladimir Shestakov, piped-up to comment that the black-belt president was in such good shape at the age of 48 that he could still occupy a place in Russia's Olympic team.
What's more, for thirtysomething women, VVP, as he is commonly known, is the sexiest man in Russia.
According to a poll conducted by a Moscow newspaper this week, Mr Putin outstrips the film stars, TV personalities, pop singers, and other celebrities in his sex appeal. Sexy politicians are not exactly thick on the ground in Russia.
If power and money are aphrodisiacs everywhere, the cruel geriatrics who ran the Kremlin for much of the 20th century remained less than attractive to Russian women.
Mikhail Gorbachev had charisma and a charming wife, but his appeal was avuncular. Boris Yeltsin, too, acquired the appeal of the erratic, forgetful grandfather.
But Vladimir Putin, according to the newspaper, is virtually unique among Russian politicians in being seen as a sex object.
''He doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink, he's into sport, he loves his wife and kids. What more do you want?'' Anna, 30, told the newspaper.
Others detailed their erotic fantasies about the former KGB colonel and confessed that they dreamt of sleeping with the president.
Only last week, Mr Putin surprised the Russian and British press by quipping, a propos of his get-together with Tony Blair in a Moscow pub, that in male company Russian men talked about women.
According to Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russian women not only talk about, but dream about VVP. If the image of the steely, creepy secret policeman is cause for suspicion of Mr Putin in the west, it seems to be part of his appeal to Russian women who buy the spin-doctored version of a less flamboyant, Russian-style James Bond.
''I've been in love with intelligence agents since I was a child,'' confessed Vika, 32. ''The KGB is so romantic - men in black suits, listening devices, impassionate faces, epaulettes. The president has an iron hand inside a velvet glove.
''Even when Putin is shaking someone's hand on television with a little smile to show that he is human, I am frightened of him - in other words I want him.
"Danger and sex always go together... Putin is like a glass of 12-year-old whisky.''
The top ten sex symbols listed for Russian women predictably include sports stars, singers, actors, and TV personalities. Perhaps the bad news for Mr Putin is that the only other politician who makes it to the top ten is the lager lout of the Russian parliament, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
He is the loudmouth, extremist clown of Russian politics, the opposite of Mr Putin's sober and severe public image.
Writing in Komsomolskaya Pravda, Darya Aslamova reveals: ''I dream of Putin at night. Black-and-white and handsome like the intelligence agent in the old Soviet cinema.''
The nostalgia for the old days of Soviet superpower is a common thread in the fantasies of Mr Putin. President Boris Yeltsin destroyed the Soviet Union and communism.
President Vladimir Putin plays with that nostalgia, deliberately and probably genuinely ambivalent about the so-called Soviet glory days, and constantly pledges to restore a semblance of that past power.
''To be honest,'' Ms Aslamova goes on, ''I thought it was only me who was licensed for the nocturnal rendezvous with Putin... So I was a bit jealous when I asked my friends - all over 30 - and found out that they all had had sex with the president in their dreams.''
The Kremlin spin doctors could not have done a better job in maintaining those 70% ratings
