A topless model lies in front of a Russian flag, apparently studying a campaign brochure, as a second young woman prepares to cast a vote in her lingerie.
“What happens in the polling booth stays in the polling booth,” says one page of sponsored content in the Russian edition of men’s magazine Maxim.
Another image shows a woman in black underwear seductively dropping her ballot paper into the box under the slogan: “Welcome to the world of adults.”
In the midst of a limp election campaign, a series of sexually charged videos and images have appeared online with the apparent aim of arousing Russians’ interest in next month’s predictable presidential election.
While it is not clear who is financing the “Elections: Adults Only” content that has also appeared on social networks and YouTube, the appeal to younger voters is unlikely to displease the Kremlin.
With Russian President Vladimir Putin all but guaranteed to win another six-year term on March 18, despite not putting forward any concrete policy proposals, turnout has become a key focus for the authorities.
The Kremlin is reportedly seeking 70 percent participation to provide Putin with a strong mandate, while opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been barred from running, has called for a boycott of polls he denounces as a sham.
Maxim editor Alexander Malenkov said he was not at liberty to say who had funded the erotic photo spreads, which were produced last year for the magazine’s autumn edition.
A behind-the-scenes video of the shoot has since racked up more than 1 million hits online.
A group under the Maxim brand on the popular social networking site VKontakte has been sharing election-related memes along with sports news and pictures of bikini-clad women since the start of the year.
A separate video appeared on YouTube this month with the title: “Sex and elections are for adults only.”
In the slickly produced advertisement, a young woman leads a man away from a bar and starts to kiss him before leaving when she discovers he has not voted.
“Then you’re not really an adult,” she says over music from the club.
“Our elections are a festival — a carnival, even, and at a carnival the erotic is allowed,” political analyst Konstantin Kalachev said of the unusual appeal to the electorate.
The Adults Only campaign comes alongside other viral videos designed to boost turnout, including a clip set on the eve of the presidential election which shows a man mocking his wife for planning to vote.
In a scene that drew condemnation, he then falls asleep and experiences the “nightmare scenario” of being called up to serve in the army with ethnic minorities and having to take in a gay lodger as part of an initiative under a new president.
A second clip shows a desperate, heavily pregnant woman screaming directions at a taxi driver — who takes her to a polling station just before voting closes, rather than a hospital.
“Who ordered them and who paid for them, it’s impossible to fully find out,” Kalachev said, adding that the Russian Central Election Committee had denied involvement.
While the analyst praised the quality of the online content, he said they were unlikely to increase turnout amid a lackluster election campaign with such a predictable result.
“If anything it will be the opposite, because they confirm that the elections have turned into a circus without any serious content,” he said.
Putin has been in power, as president or prime minister, since 1999.
“There are a few weeks left before the election, but candidate Putin doesn’t have a program. Putin doesn’t appear in his own campaign videos. It seems like he’s treating it as a ritual process, he’s tired of it himself,” Kalachev said. “Turnout has become the fetish of these elections.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of