Calendar girls turn on Putin
In Britain the term ‘Calendar Girls’ may be first associated with the Dame Helen Mirren vehicle of the same name, an innocent attempt to raise funds for a local hospital. In Moscow however the term has become politically charged.
A second group of Russian journalism students have hit back at a saucy (and bizarre) outpouring of adulation for Prime Minister Putin with a less flattering publication of their own.
Posing with their mouths taped shut alongside tricky questions for the Russian leader, six students from Moscow State University have produced a pin up calendar which is unlikely to adorn Putin’s wall.
The hasty counter-calendar was shot overnight to show that “There are other people who study at this faculty who are interested in their profession, who are interested in what is going on in their country,” said Miss March-April, Elizaveta Menshchikova.
It is an attempt to elicit the truth behind the unsolved murders of dissidents and indefinite imprisonment of Kremlin critics.
The flurry of calendars coincides with Putin’s 58th birthday.