Who says Vladimir Putin has a Roman emperor complex? Well...

To be fair to Vladimir Putin, this was at least not his idea.

But we expect that appealing to the Russian president's ego was in the mind of Cossack chieftain Andrei Polyakov of the St Petersburg Cossack Society (look it up) when he commissioned this bust.

Polyakov wants to install a new monument to Putin in St Petersburg in time for Russia's Victory Day celebrations on May 9, when the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War (or Great Patriotic War if you're Russian) is marked.

Putin recently reappeared in public after not being seen for 11 days, laughing off rumours about plastic surgery and lovechildren being born with the words: “Things would be boring without gossip."

(Pictures: Corbis)

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