Putin vs Medvedev: There Can Be Only One

A few weeks before Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov announced his latest bid for the Russian presidency, a certain YouTube user named “leninkprf” uploaded a spoof action movie trailer titled “Putin vs Medvedev.” After two and a half minutes of bizarrely elaborate scenes of apocalypse and scandal, the clip reveals itself to actually be an ad for the Communist Party.

With Russia’s next presidential election less than a year away, political analysts are obsessing over every last statement by members of the ruling tandem. With eleven long months of intrigue yet ahead, the Communist Party clearly grasped the appeal of some electoral comic relief – as their more than 1.6 million YouTube views since March 30 attest.

On Tuesday, another user posted an English-subtitled version of the video: