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Russia's Putin sexy, but not that sexy
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By CATRINA STEWART and NATALIYA VASILYEVA, Associated Press Writers
MOSCOW - He reportedly saved a TV crew from the jaws of a tiger and flexed his muscles before cameras in Siberia.
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 gray silk shirt and chinos.
It's rare that Putin loses out in any popularity contest at home — where he is widely admired for having restored national pride and stability after the difficult post-Soviet years under Boris Yeltsin.
Russia remains a country with limited press freedoms and carefully controlled images of its leadership — so it's 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 fishing, horse riding and off-roading in Siberia with Prince Albert of Monaco prompted admiring women to flood local newspaper Web sites with excited letters.
In his most recent escapade, Putin last month was said to have 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 Russia's Far East region of 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. Thrice married, 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 couldn't get Dmitry Medvedev into the top five: the diminutive president came 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.
As of Thursday, Putin had a narrow lead over Ilya Yashin, who leads the youth movement of opposition party Yabloko. Former Economy Minister German Gref comes in at third.
Some readers were perplexed by the magazine's ranking.
"Nemtsov? I haven't heard his name for ages," said one reader who was identified as Daria, a 23-year-old translator.
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