A GROUP OF journalism students from Moscow State University have retaliated against a group of their peers who produced a raunchy calendar to mark Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s birthday.

The original calendar showed young women dressed in lingerie, with speech bubbles coming from their mouths with messages like: “You put out forest fires, but I’m still burning.”

Miss February asks suggestively ”How about a third time?”, hinting at possible third-presidential term for Mr Putin, who is reportedly considering running again in 2012.

However, a rival group of journalism have also produced a calendar – this time featuring six women wearing black with their mouths taped shut.

The captions alongside the students couldn’t be more different: they ask questions such as “Who killed Anna Politkovskaya?”,  in reference to the murder of the journalist, a stern critic of the Kremlin, four years ago.

Another asks: “When will they free Mikhail Khodorkovsky?”, in reference to the jailing of the former Yukos oil magnate – a figure who was perceived as a challenging the Kremlin’s power.

One of the students, Yelizaveta Menshikova, told the BBC’s Russian site:

Breasts are pretty, yes – I have them too. But I also have a head on my shoulders. And we girls did this all ourselves, without producers.

Menshikova told TheJournal.ie that she did not wish to comment further on the calendar as the women involved did not want “the fight about [their] school to last any longer”.

The dean of the MGU journalism faculty Yelena Vartanova has told reporters that she is annoyed that the university has been associated with the original, erotic calendar.

“I simply don’t understand what the journalism faculty and university have to do with this,” she said. “To make their commercial project successful the girls used brands that they did not create, that do not belong to them.”