The president of Russia holds a black belt in judo, once worked for the K.G.B. and has been known, when angered, to make pointed allusions to killing enemies in their outhouses and telling journalists to undergo a bris by a surgeon with lousy aim. Superman wouldn't tug on this guy's cape.

Separated at Birth? Vladimir V. Putin . . . and Dobby the House-Elf.

So what was Novaya Gazeta thinking when it compared Vladimir V. Putin to Dobby the House-Elf? The decidedly liberal Moscow daily reported on Jan. 20 that a major Moscow law firm was preparing to sue Warner Brothers, the factory that churns out the Harry Potter movies, for adapting Mr. Putin's likeness to Dobby, a computer-generated elf in its latest release, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."

For those who haven't seen the film, Dobby appears near the start to warn young Harry against returning to Hogwarts. He is a kindhearted fellow who gains his freedom from evil masters, a not-unflattering story line that could well fit Mr. Putin, depending on one's view of the K.G.B. But Dobby is also a wizened midget with bulging green eyeballs and floppy ears who wears a pillowcase. Mr. Putin is perhaps slightly shortish as world leaders go, but wizened he is not. He is a pretty snappy dresser, too.

Despite that, the supposed Putin-Dobby resemblance has become something of a news event, and is clogging the chat rooms of Harry Potter Internet fan sites. Russians have reacted with an equal measure of good humor and wounded national pride.

"The only difference is in the ears and height," a Potter devotee named AnaBell wrote on the Russian Internet site Snape (www.snape.by.ru). "And probably, also Dobby doesn't have a black belt." To which another blogger replied: "It's not even funny. I think Putin should sue our journalists (or who's making the public comparison?)."

Helpful foreigners have pointed out elsewhere on the Web that some American presidents are regularly ridiculed, usually over canards like low I.Q.'s. And several people have said Dobby actually resembles another world leader, the long-departed King Charles II of Bourbon. Almost lost amid this was the fact that no lawsuit has been filed. A call to Novaya Gazeta failed to elicit the identity of the angry lawyers, or the names of those they represent.

Absent legal action, one news article has suggested that the Dobby-Putin nexus is a funny news story, but maybe not much more. The Kremlin is silent on the entire issue.