While he has no ability to win a gold medal, President Vladimir Putin is the star of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, at least in the eyes of The New Yorker cartoonist Barry Blitt.
Blitt drew Putin dressed as a figure skater in a "Being John Malkovich"-type situation, surrounded by a panel of judges that are also all caricatures of the president, on the cover of this week's magazine, titled "Jury of His Peers."
The Sochi Olympics, which begin Feb. 7, are largely viewed as a priority project for Putin, who personally lobbied for the southern Russian city to receive the Games and has funneled large amounts of budget money into the event to ensure its success.
This is not the first time that Putin has been the subject of the U.S. magazine's satire. Following his New York Times op-ed against U.S. intervention in Syria, the magazine's fake news series "The Borowitz Report" wrote a Putin submission to the Times' "Modern Love" column that said, "love means shooting at something and making it fall down."
Blitt, who has drawn for The New Yorker since 1992, has been behind some of publication's most memorable covers, such as the controversial 2008 drawing poking fun at some conservative Americans' perceptions of U.S. President Barack Obama as secretly practicing Islam.
