President Vladimir Putin has dismissed calls for women to refrain from sleeping with FIFA World Cup tourists, saying Russian women are free to do as they choose.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, who spoke ahead of the opening ceremony Thursday said,

“As for Russian women, they can, perhaps, decide it on their own. They are the best women in the whole world.”

He made the assertion while responding to a sex ban call by 70-year-old Tamara Pletnyova, who said she hoped women would not date visiting fans and get pregnant.

But as controversy raged over the Communist MP’s remarks, the deputy prime minister in Kaliningrad has suggested local women should be open to sleeping with foreigners.

Siberian-born Pletnyova, head of the Russian parliamentary family committee, said young women should ‘get something clear in their heads regarding foreigners’, saying Russian women could end up raising mixed-race children on their own with a reference to the ‘Children of the Olympics’ after the 1980 Moscow games.

The term was used during the Soviet era to describe non-white children conceived at international events after relationships between Russian women and men from Africa, Latin America, or Asia. Many of the children faced discrimination.

But 53-year-old Alexander Rolbinov, deputy premier in Kaliningrad, accused Pletnyova of turning the clock back to Soviet times.
So, it appears Russia may be fun for tourists after all.