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.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in