Second Playboy model takes on Putin
RUSSIA: A television presenter and singer has announced that she will stand for the Russian presidency next year, becoming the second woman to put herself forward as an alternative to Vladimir Putin.
Yekaterina Gordon, 37, a mother of two, said in a video on her website that she would run as a champion of women’s and children’s rights.
‘‘I will likely be the only candidate not agreed with the presidential administration,’’ she said, in a dig at Kseniya Sobchak, the former socialite who announced she was running this month.
Sobchak, 35, has been accused of being used as a Kremlin spoiler to give the vote a veneer of competition while distracting attention from the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who could present a threat to Vladimir Putin if allowed to run.
Navalny is trying to force his way on to the ballot next March despite a dubious fraud conviction that will probably exclude him.
There will be deep suspicions about Gordon’s own motives. Kremlin sources said in September that Putin’s aides were looking for unthreatening women to run against him.
The two women, who have both posed for Playboy, had a public on-air spat in 2008.
Sobchak accused her rival of being a ‘‘pseudointellectual’’ and having the ‘‘complex of someone who didn’t make it as a star’’.
That followed a comment by Gordon that suggested that Sobchak, a guest on her radio programme, was an empty media personality. - The Times