Moscow: One of Russia's most popular newspapers said on Friday it had managed to get Paul, the oracle German octopus which accurately predicted the World Cup results to forecast who will be Russia's next president.
But Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda said the results of Paul's prediction for the 2012 presidential election have been sealed until election year, reports DNA.
The paper said one of its reporters approached Paul, who lives at the Sea Life attraction in the German city of Oberhausen and put two sheets of paper with the names of Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin and president Dmitry Medvedev in front of the soothsaying invertebrate, which pointed to one of the names with a tentacle.
Since Medvedev replaced Putin as president in 2008, with the latter taking over the cabinet, it has been unclear who is the number one decision-maker. A recent poll conducted by Russia's Levada-Centre shows that 76% of respondents believe Putin is the country's most influential person, while 67% see Medvedev as top leader.
Both politicians at some point said they were considering running for president in 2012. In April Medvedev said they would decide together who is going to run.
Paul the octopus became famous for accurately predicting the outcome of Germany's World Cup campaign and the World Cup final between Spain and The Netherlands.
His Russian presidential pick has been conducted in a fashion rather different to his World Cup prognostications, where he predicted football matches by picking food from two different transparent containers lowered into his tank, each adorned with the flag of one of the matches'' competitors.
Meanwhile the German aquarium where Octopus Paul has been kept ha said there is no way they are sending the celebrity mollusk to Spain. The response comes after the Madrid Zoo made an unspecified bid for the octopus. Sea Life Acquarium Oberhausen s[pokesperson Kerstin Kuehn said that it is “completely out of the question to sell or even lend Paul to the Spanish zoo”, reports AP.
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