Journalist Yekaterina Gordon, 37, will run for office in elections next March alongside the socialite and reality television star Ksenia Sobchak.
Both women have posed for the nude magazine and cynics claim their presidential bids are PR campaigns and a distraction from Mr Putin’s serious challenger Alexei Navalny.
Ms Sobchak’s candidacy was initially dismissed as a Kremlin-backed hoax but since launching her campaign a week ago she has already ridden roughshod over a range of political taboos.
First she demanded the release of two dozen political prisoners and then stated Crimea was part of Ukraine and accused Russia of violating international law by annexing the region in 2014.
She continued by talking loudly about Mr Navalny, Mr Putin’s opposition challenger who is expected to be barred from the race, on state television, which normally ignores him.
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She then took part in a memorial for victims of a botched operation to end a theatre siege by Chechen terrorists in 2002.
Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Kremlin spin-doctor, said Ms Sobchak’s involvement suggests an election campaign different from anything the country has seen since Vladimir Putin came to power almost 18 years ago.
He said: “This is a completely unstable situation, a completely unusual campaign.
“Nothing in it has been decided in my opinion.”
Since 2000, Mr Putin has constructed a “managed democracy” which mimics parties, institutions and elections with the Kremlin pulling the strings.
Indeed, many in Moscow believe Ms Sobchak is running under licence from the president amid rumours he is her godfather.
Mr Putin is widely expected to run and win again next March but the constitution allows no more than two consecutive terms and at 65 he is likely to start his final six-year term next year.
That has fuelled speculation that this election will be the start of a transfer of power.
Ms Sobchak’s emergence as a candidate adds to the unpredictability of the situation.
She is recognisable to 95 per cent of the Russian public with more than 5 million followers on Instagram and more than 1.6 million on Twitter.
She said: “There are only two people in this country with that kind of recognition: me and Putin.”
But critics of the Putin regime remain unconvinced.
Marina Litvinovich, a political consultant who once worked for the Kremlin but has since become a sharp critic of Mr Putin, said: “Of course her candidacy is useful to the Kremlin now, to show that there is pluralism, to pretend that these are real elections.
“But she is a media nuclear weapon. If they are really backing her, they are playing a very, very risky game.
“People who hear her say these things will start thinking: Oh, so this is allowed?”
Most political analysts dismiss the ambitions of Ms Sobchak’s advisers to make her the torch bearer of a popular movement and ordinary Russians also have their doubts.
But Russian election experts say it is far too early to judge her role in the presidential election.