Looking for a powerful, influential man to marry? Do you want a guy with a warlike disposition and a lot of balls? How about someone bare-chested who can wrestle a bear? How virile is that? Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially been single since 2014, when his divorce from Lyudmila, his wife of 30 years, was finalized. Prior to her marriage, she was an Aeroflot flight attendant.

So from where did I get the bear-wrestling story? It came from a very trustworthy source on Fox News in 2014—former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who declared, “People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil.” Her statement was based on some real facts—Putin’s shirtless horseback riding combined with the fact that he once hugged a tranquillized polar bear.

If you’d like to find out more about what a stellar chap the Russian president happens to be, take a look at Masha Gessen’s biography, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. However, you may have already missed the boat as far as hooking up with him is concerned. It appears that well before his divorce, Putin has had a girlfriend, Alina Kabaeva, who is 31 years his junior. As a former Olympic gymnast, she must be flexible enough to reach all the places that the 69-year-old president is too old and creaky to reach.

Rumors had been flying for a long time about the sorry state of the Putins’ marriage. There were many allegations of Vladimir’s affairs and his violence towards Lyudmila in the foreign press—obviously all gossip and unfair character assassination. So you can understand why in 2008, one Russian paper that dared to mention presidential philandering had to be immediately shut down by the authorities.

From what sleazebag, unreliable source did some of these allegations arise? In November 2011, the International Business Times website as well as the German media reported that while he was a KGB spy in Germany from 1985 to 1990, Vladimir Putin had been labeled as a wife-beater and adulterer. This was according to secret files from Germany’s spy agency BND discovered by Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, expert and author of several books on the organization. Lyudmila became a close friend of an undercover female German spy who worked as an interpreter in the KGB office. Claims Schmidt-Eenboom, “Contrary to the picture she would paint later of an ideal marriage, [Lyudmila] complained to her confidante about domestic violence and numerous affairs.”

Rarely seen in public, Lyudmila seemed to become a prisoner of her position as Russian First Lady. So where is she now? Some reports claim her ex-husband has sent her to hunker down in a nuclear bunker in Siberia while the invasion of Ukraine continues.

Lyudmila was lucky to escape the polonium tea solution and get away with divorce, although I’m sure she’s under one hell of a gag order not to spill any beans about her former beloved. Not so fortunate was Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident in London who died a horrible death from radioactive poisoning in 2006. Former KGB agents, most likely under orders from Putin himself, met with him and spiked his tea with polonium-210.

Male infidelity seems to be the norm among Russians. In her book Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee (Penguin Books, 2007), Pamela Druckerman writes that “life expectancy for Russian men has fallen so sharply (to 59) that by age 65 there are just 46 men left for every 100 women.” According to a recent study in The Lancet reported in the British newspaper The Guardian in January 2014, 25% of Russian men die before age 55, compared to 7% of Brits and about 10% of Yanks. The culprit? Copious quantities of vodka. Apparently the Russian males still left standing take full advantage of this fact. Druckerman states that none of the married men she met in Russia said they were monogamous.

Thus, there should be a huge market in Russia for my book, Adulterer’s Wife: How to Thrive Whether You Stay or Not. But there’s one hitch—in 2014, Putin enacted a law banning cursing in films, books and music. I would have to write an expletive-free version of my salty-language filled opus, and what the hell would I do with all the X-rated cartoons? According to the Kremlin, books, CDs or DVDs containing swearing can now only be distributed in a sealed package labeled “Contains obscene language.” So how can I wrap up my Kindle book, I wonder? Do I need an expletive warning watermark on every page? All I can say is sookin sin, what a load of govno.

CNN World reported that the 2014 legislation banned any live entertainment or new films containing obscene language. At the time, I wondered if  that meant the only American offerings Russians would be able to see at the movie theater were Disney cartoons. But this is now a moot point. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Hollywood has stopped distributing new films to Russian cinemas. As the Moscow Times reports, movie theatres there are having to switch from Hollywood to  Bollywood productions.

However, laws banning cursing in entertainment pale in comparison to the raft of new restrictions being enacted in Russia, where Putin is using the war against Ukraine as an excuse to crack down on dissent more brutally than ever before. As supermarket shelves empty because of Western sanctions, Putin insists that Russia will emerge stronger despite people having to tighten their belts in the short term. It brings to mind the Charlie Chaplin’s wonderful Adenoid Hynkel Speech from his 1940 film, The Great Dictator. He was parodying Hitler, but the portrayal would work just as well for Vladimir Putin.