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The “Putin Shirtless Challenge” is inspiring Russian hunks to show their stuff on Instagram

Following widely-circulated photos of trollish Russian President Vladimir Putin sunbathing sans shirt while on vacation in Siberia, Pavel Durov — the eccentric entrepreneur and founder of social networking website VKontakte and Telegram– concocted a challenge for his legion of Instagram followers.

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He explains the rules like so:

“My Instagram had to seriously step up the game to keep up with the increased competition from Mr. Putin’s shirtless photos. If you’re Russian, you have to join #PutinShirtlessChallenge (or face oblivion). Two rules from Putin – no photoshop, no pumping. Otherwise you’re not an alpha.”

As you can see, Durov’s followers are game as hell (and really rather ripped):

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A post shared by Artem Smagin (@smag_art) on

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A post shared by ?????????? (@kostyankostyan) on

#PutinShirtlessChallenge

A post shared by Y A N• (@yandmitrievich) on

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A post shared by ???? (@zerdigos) on

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A post shared by i 2 4 0 6 (@i.24.06) on

?????? ?? ???? ???????? ??? ???????? ????? ???????? ?? @durov, ??????? ???? ????? ??????? ? #putinshirtlesschallenge

A post shared by Aleksandr Rodionov (@rodionovsanyaa) on

??????? ? ???? ????? #putinshirtlesschallenge #reporter #tv #jajaja #lol #news

A post shared by Nikolay Sokolov (@sokolovnikolaytv) on

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