MOSCOW – Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is to be featured in a mobile-phone game in which he will be fighting a horde of zombies.
The game, You Don’t Mess With Putin, is being developed by Belgium’s Michele Rocco Smeets.
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Smeets is known for the video game “Run Snowden Run,” centered on fugitive U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden, which, incidentally, featured Putin as a cameo.
Smeets told the Russian newspaper RBK Daily that he arrived at the idea after discovering the video game “Call of Duty Black Ops: Zombies” and particularly its character Nikolai Belinski, a Russian soldier fighting in WWII.
“I am a fan of Putin and I like his tough-guy image, so he suits the role of a superhero,” he was quoted as saying, adding that the game’s other principal character, “Comrade Mike,” is based on the game’s developer himself.
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You Don’t Mess With Putin will be available for free from Apple’s App Store and Google Play as of Oct. 31.
The Kremlin wouldn’t comment on the news, and the Russian media’s reaction didn’t go far beyond announcing the release of the game and providing a few quotes from the developer.
Meanwhile, the news triggered a slew of sarcastic comments on blogs, forums and social media. In his comment on the website of the opposition FM radio station Ekho Moskvy, one user suggested that examples of Putin’s harsh rhetoric, for which he has been known, should be included in the game, such as “mochit v sortire” (“to kill in the toilet”), which he used in reference to Chechen terrorists back in 1999.
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