It’s always seemed at least possible that “A Man Like Putin” was a Kremlin creation (see this BBC article about how nobody knew anything about the band or the origin of the record when it started dominating Russian airwaves), but it wasn’t until I saw last week’s Frontline mini-episode on Russia that I started to believe it.

Here’s the link; you have to chose “Watch this video” and then “Chapters”: “Planning for the Future.” The segment is about Nashi, a Kremlin-sponsored youth group and summer camp where kids daily pass by satirical posters of Kasparov, an opposition leader, in women’s lingerie, and learn to say that all those who oppose Putin are “fascists.” This is wild enough, but then—well, just keep watching until the mass weddings and the barge full of tents for rapid conception.

This whole thing also reminded me of the Discovery Institute’s pro-Putin Real Russia Project and blog—which I have tangled with before—and this weird rant about an opposition party using sexy girls and music videos to get votes (“Perhaps the liberal parties in Russia and their highly-paid Western advisors need someone to explain to them why babushkas are not easily rallied to their banner by underage lesbians cavorting across their television screens”). As far as I can tell, Real Russia has not weighed in on the sexuality of the girls in the Putin video.