(cbsnews) Moscow - Kremlin officials like to insist Russian President Vladimir Putin does not care for big birthday bashes and that he will be spending his 60th on Sunday quietly celebrating with close friends and family in his home city, St. Petersburg.
However, the president's supporters don't appear to have received the memo, and so the day has seen an unprecedented exhibition of Putin-idolatry reminiscent of some of the world's oddest cults of personality.
Much of it - like it the fawning, up-close-and-personal profile on Kremlin-friendly television channel NTV - looks like propaganda. Some of the praise can be so extreme as to appear almost like a subtle form of satire on Putin's heroic representations in state media. And some Putin opponents have used the occasion to poke fun.
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