KEY POINTS:
LONDON - If Russian women are searching for a new sex symbol, they need look no further than the Kremlin's website.
There they can find the full set of pictures of Vladimir 'the body' Putin strutting his stuff, bare-chested, along the banks of a Siberian river during a
fishing expedition.
Since the pictures were released to the world last week, the mainly Kremlin-controlled Russian media have finally got in on the act, and the 54-year old president's macho but raunchy poses have become the talk of the country.
The mass circulation daily Komsomolskaya Pravda on Wednesday published the now infamous photo of the bare-chested president in military fatigues, offering its readers an exercise regime so they could "be like Putin".
Women readers wrote to the paper's website to comment on his "vigorous torso" and were reported to be "screaming with delight and showering him with compliments".
The blogs are also alive with comment, including one saucy one comparing Mr Putin, and his guest, Prince Albert II of Monaco, to the gay cowboys in the film Brokeback Mountain.
The message of the 'he-man' images of a president was lost on no-one in the West.
They can only serve the purposes of the Kremlin bent on demonstrating that Russia is flexing its muscles, literally and figuratively.
In recent days, Russia has reignited talk of a new 'Cold War' after President Putin ordered nuclear-capable strategic bombers back into the skies for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, prompting Nato jets to scramble on at least two occasions.
Relations with western-leaning Georgia have sharply deteriorated after a Russian warplane was accused last week of dropping a missile on a Georgian village.
On Tuesday, the Georgians accused the Russians of again violating the former Soviet republic's airspace.
The dispute further escalated yesterday when the Georgian defence ministry announced that it was stepping up the integration of Georgia's radar system into Nato because of concerns about Russia.
"Recent incidents prompted discussions in Brussels, at NATO headquarters, to speed up these procedures, so that Georgia is incorporated into that system as soon as possible," Georgian Deputy Defence Minister Batu Kuteliya told Reuters.
"They should probably be finished late this autumn."
The Russians deny that a fighter jet was in the area, and yesterday the armed forces chief of staff, General Yuri Baluyevsky, accused the Georgians of "hallucinations".
A (fully-clothed) Mr Putin earlier this week opened an air show east of Moscow, promising to revive the country's lagging aviation industry by building more passenger planes.
The production of strategic bombers is also expected to resume now that the long-range aircraft have resumed their round-the-clock flights.
But not everything is going the Kremlin's way.
Russia yesterday ordered its entire fleet of Su-24 bombers to be grounded after one of the planes crashed during a training run in the Russian far-east.
Technical problems were blamed.
- INDEPENDENT
