MOSCOW -- To much of the world, he's just a bland Russian President, a man who jokes with American leaders, and occasionally threatens to invade small neighbouring countries.

In a new novel, however, he's nothing less than a Russian James Bond, battling hand to hand against his deadly archenemy. And in an opera, to be released soon, he's a singing romantic lead, fighting the charms of a Russian Monica Lewinsky.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man rarely confused with Bill Clinton and his celebrity aura, is suddenly the subject of a wave of adoring new art that is putting a shine on the presidential image.

First came The President,a spy novel by Latvian author Alexander Olbik that portrays Mr. Putin, an ex-KGB man in real life, as a 007-style secret agent who takes the Chechen war into his own hands, heading to the Caucasus to do hand-to-hand battle with Shamil, a rebel leader.

The cover of the book, which was published this summer, features a drawing of Mr. Putin glaring at readers through a black special-forces balaclava in front of the Russian flag.

In the novel, Mr. Putin is just your run-of-the-mill agent-turned-president until Shamil (a clear reference to Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev) challenges him to be a man and go to Chechnya to settle matters face-to-face.

In a bloody climax, Mr. Putin kills Shamil by biting his throat.

As strange a turn as that was for the President's alter-ego, the plot of a new opera, Monica in the Kremlin, seems more far-fetched. The opera is a romantic comedy that follows the trials of Masha Levinsova, a double-agent and comely personal assistant to the president, one Mr. Krutin.

A CIA plant, her task is to slip the president a love potion in order to ensnare him in a sex scandal.

The mission fails when she mistakenly gives it to his bodyguard.

A happy ending ensues when it is revealed that Ms. Levinsova is actually a Russian double agent who has tricked the Americans.

She marries the bodyguard and everyone in the Kremlin lives happily ever after.

While the extra publicity doesn't seem to be hurting Mr. Putin politically -- his approval ratings hover around 70 per cent -- the Kremlin has tried to dampen the fad, fearing the inevitable comparisons it will raise to the personality cults that surrounded past leaders such as Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.

In recent months, the government asked a Putin-themed bar in Chelyabinsk, in the Ural Mountains, to take the President's name off the marquee.

It also denied a request from a man who wanted to name a variety of tomato after the President.

Mr. Olbik, the novelist, was forced to publish The President in Ukraine because of official objections in Russia.

But the Kremlin hasn't been able to completely dampen the spreading Putinmania.

A pop song currently getting play on Russian radio features an all-girl band, Singing Together, harmonizing about their dream guy.

"I want a man like Putin, who doesn't drink. A man like Putin, who doesn't hurt me. A man like Putin, who won't shame me," the song goes.

Despite the official displeasure with the trend, many Russians believe there is something organized about the sudden celebration. It has been noted that Singing Together in Russian sounds a lot like the phrase for Moving Together, a mysteriously well-financed youth organization that can be seen on Moscow streets wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the President's face.

But Mr. Olbik, for one, denies he had any political motives for casting Mr. Putin as the hero of his series.

He says he simply sensed that basing his character on the President would help sell books.

"If I had named 'the hero' Petrov or Ivanov, nobody would read it," he said recently. "You could change the name to [former president Boris] Yeltsin, but I can't see Yeltsin going into the mountains and fighting."