MOSCOW (AP) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has received an unusual birthday gift — an erotic calendar made by 12 female journalism students at Moscow State University.
Each month features one of the students posing in fancy underwear, with words of flattery printed beside her scantily clad image.
The calendar provoked an outcry in Russia, where many saw it as a government-orchestrated move to boost Putin’s popularity on his 58th birthday Thursday.
A group of fellow journalism students quickly created their own online calendar with pictures of themselves with their mouths plastered over to protest Putin’s policies.
"How about a third time?" asks Miss February, hinting at a third presidential term for Putin, who served two terms as president from 2000 to 2008 and is eligible to run again in 2012.
"You put out the forest fires, but I’m still burning," says Miss March, referring to Putin’s piloting of a firefighting plane during the summer’s devastating wildfires.
During his decade in power, Putin has been glorified in song and seen his name used to sell a brand of now-popular vodka. Students have formed Putin fan clubs, and activists in Kremlin-connected youth groups have chanted his name at their rallies and staged pranks ridiculing his critics.
The calendar created for Putin’s 58th birthday takes its inspiration from the Kremlin-driven campaign to boost Putin’s popularity and cultivate his alpha-male image. Putin himself has been known to show some skin, posing shirtless on horseback and while fishing.
The release of the pinup calendar was announced by the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, whose spokeswoman Kristina Potupchik posted the images in her blog. She gave the print run — 50,000 — and said they were on sale in Moscow supermarkets for the equivalent of $8.50.
The calendars may also been the latest effort to profit from the prime minister’s popularity.
The 12 pinup girls, all students of Moscow State University’s journalism school, apparently risk no rebuke.
"I think this calendar is a rather frivolous production, but I don’t see any crime in it," Yelena Vartanova, the school’s dean, told Associated Press Television News.
A separate group of journalism students quickly created a quite different calendar online, comprised of pictures of themselves wearing black and with their mouths taped shut to protest Putin’s policies.
"Who killed Anna Politkovskaya?" asked one of them, referring to the investigative reporter who was shot four years ago to the day.
At a rally commemorating Politkovskaya’s murder, chess champion and opposition leader Garry Kasparov said the pinup calendar was created by the kind of journalists who sell out to the Kremlin.
"Authorities promote journalists of this kind and kill the honest ones," he told a couple hundred people who gathered in central Moscow to commemorate Politkovskaya, according to Kasparov’s website.
Politkovskaya was a harsh critic of the Kremlin and exposed widespread human-rights abuses and corruption in Chechnya.
Prosecutors have said little about who might have ordered the contract-style killing, and the suspected gunman is believed to be hiding abroad. Three men accused of playing minor roles in the killing remain under investigation.
At least 18 journalists have been murdered with impunity in Russia since Putin came to power in 2000, according to the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Putin and his spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment about the calendar. Its creators said they had not consulted with Putin’s office or anyone else in politics before publishing the calendar.
"We wanted to create a colourful project and at the same time make a present for his birthday," Vladimir Tabak, a co-head of the publishing company that put out the calendar, told Reuters.
Tabak said he and colleagues at the company, Fakultet, are graduates of the Moscow State University journalism department but that the calendar had no connection with the department.
A spokeswoman for the department told Ekho Moskvy radio that it was "tactless" of the publisher to use the department’s name for the calendar, but that the students would face no punishment.
Nine of the calendar girls are current students at the department, two are graduates and one is to enrol there soon, Tabak said. He said all were at least 18 except one 17-year-old who was more fully dressed than the others.
A combo pictures made on Oct. 7, 2010 shows pages of a 2011 "alternative" calendar, featuring students with their names and a text saying: "Vladimir Vladimirovich, we have some questions…" (top) and "When will they free Mikhail Khodorkovsky?" (bottom). (AFP)
A combo pictures made on Oct. 7, 2010 shows pages of a 2011 "alternative" calendar, featuring students with their names and a text saying: "Who killed Anna Politkovskaya?" (top) and "When will be the next act of terror?" (bottom). (AFP)
A reproduction made on Oct. 6, 2010 shows the January page of a 2011 calendar, featuring a girl with her name and a text saying: "Vladimir Vladimirovich, Everyone needs a man like you." (AFP)
A reproduction made on Oct. 6, 2010 shows the February page of a 2011 calendar, featuring a girl with her name and a text saying: "Vladimir Vladimirovich, How about the third term?" (AFP)
A reproduction of the March page of the 2011 calendar shows clad in a black lace negligee, Miss March, Lena Gornostayeva, with a text bubble containing a happy birthday message for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin : "You put out the forest fires, but I’m still burning." (AFP)
A reproduction made on Oct. 6, 2010 shows the December page of a 2011 calendar, featuring a girl with a text wishing happy birthday to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and saying: "I want to congratulate you personally. Please call…." (AFP)
