Amid Russia's respectful preparations for U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit this week, a popular Russian television show is cooking up a less reverent event for the summit.

In the episode to run Sunday, the satirical puppet show Kukly (Puppets) will have the figure of President Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB agent, use his old spy tricks trying to get Clinton to become a turncoat.

"I think that to a great extent, President Putin will relate to President Clinton as to some kind of an old ideological and military rival and opponent," show director Grigory Lyubomirov said Thursday.

"Therefore, we thought up this kind of story line for our show about Putin's attempt to talk to Clinton in the language of a professional spy," Lyubomirov said.

Unlike his extroverted predecessor Boris Yeltsin, the poker-faced Putin seems reserved and enigmatic, both in life and on the show.

In a Kukly episode that was being filmed Thursday, the Putin puppet is told by an aide that "Friend Bill" is already on his way.

"To some 'Friend Bill,' and to some an object for recruitment," the Putin figure replies, asking for secret-service files on Clinton.

The U.S. president also gets his share of Kukly's trademark lampooning.

Told by an aide that Putin had served as an intelligence officer in East Germany, the Clinton figure asks: "And where is East Germany?"

"To the right of West Germany, Mr. President," the aide said. To that, the Clinton figure looks out of an airplane window and declares that East Germany is nowhere to be seen.

Kukly had made another episode about Clinton two years ago, speculating about what might have happened if the U.S. president found himself in Russia at the time of bloody Communist purges of the 1930s.

Clinton saw the program, and did not mind being made fun of, Lyubomirov said – unlike Russian officials, many of whom would like the program, or at least the Putin figure, to disappear.

"I think [Clinton] has an absolutely normal and natural reaction for a citizen of a democratic nation – this is humor, satire, and it makes no sense to fight satire," Lyubomirov said.