Putin’s legacy: Russia’s greatest love machine?

With less than a month left in office, it seems outgoing Russian president Vladimir Putin - known for his expertise as a judo master, skier, fighter plane pilot and even bare-breasted hunter - is finally happy to show a softer side. He appears to have done nothing to interfere with the upcoming release of a fictional Russian film called A Kiss - Not for the Press (or translated more colloquially, 'Kiss Me off the Record'), whose hero is quite clearly modelled on the president, his doting wife Lyudmilla, and his loving daughters.

A Kiss, to be released on St Valentine's Day, shies away from mentioning Putin by name, but tells the story of a young KGB spy from St Petersburg who marries an air hostess and fathers two daughters and becomes president - an identical path charted by the 55-year-old Russian leader. 'True life' scenes include a car accident in which his wife is badly injured, and the future First Family escaping a fire at the family dacha outside St Petersburg. It is not known whether scenes suggesting the hero’s spectacular talents in the bedroom are drawn from real-life.

'Putin' is played by Andrei Panin, a respected actor best-known by Russians for his role as a corrupt policeman in Brigada, a mini-series about crime groups in the early 1990s. The film is produced by Anatoly Voropayev, a Kremin insider who was once a deputy regional governor. He told a recent press conference that no one consulted the Kremlin about the film, and denied reports that Lyudmilla Putin helped write the script. The film has already drawn derision on Russian websites. "Ra-ra GasPutin, Russia's greatest love machine," one blogger wrote.