Daily News Magazine from India & around the world.

SHE’S A perky brunette, a seductive model who invites men into her Moscow apartment for sex.

But if you are a member of Russia’s political opposition, you’d better look out.

The mysterious Katya is no ordinary girlnext- door but the bait in a honey trap involving hidden cameras and cleverly edited Internet videos that has snared up to six prominent critics of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. She stars in a series of scandalous videos that has caused a stir in the Russian blogosphere and prompted speculation that they were masterminded by agents of the FSB, the successor to the Soviet- era KGB. During the Cold War, the KGB perfected the honey trap — the use of sex and threats of blackmail to compel foreign agents and diplomats to cooperate with the Soviets.

Now those tactics have been updated for the iPhone era and deployed against opponents of Putin’s government, with the apparent aim of embarrassing them and undercutting their moral authority.

In a video that surfaced online last week, three well- known Kremlin critics are shown having sex with a girl, all in the same bedroom though at different times.

They are Viktor Shenderovich, a liberal satirist; Eduard Limonov, founder of the banned National Bolshevik Party; and Alexander Belov, former leader of the nationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration.

Shenderovich and Belov, both of whom are married, have confirmed to Russian media that they were in the video. “ For over 10 years, I have been commenting on the deeds of Mr Putin and his thuggish administration... ( they) listened indifferently and without denying anything responded with illegal filth,” Shenderovich wrote on his blog.

Limonov, who is divorced, has not confirmed whether he was in the video but wrote on his blog: “ I do not see anything objectionable about the fact that opposition men do not refuse women.” The creators of the video — posted on the website of the obscure group Civil Committee for the Defence of Morality, Law and Civil Agreement — were clearly sophisticated.

The video features multiple camera angles, music and clips from a popular comedy show. The girl’s face is digitally obscured.

“ This needs professionals,” FSB ex- agent turned anti- corruption activist Kirill Kabanov told The New Times . “ You need to observe the target, bug his phones so you know his timetable and then make sure the victim suspects nothing.” Former KGB general Alexei Kondaurov, however, told the weekly it was unlikely that state intelligence was involved.

More likely, it was private security firms who had the appropriate technical equipment.

The Katyagate scandal unfolded in March with a video that showed a man resembling Mikhail Fishman, the editor of the Russian edition of Newsweek , sniffing cocaine on a couch next to a girl in her underwear.

Then two prominent opposition activists said they had been targeted in similar honey traps, with the same girl and the same apartment shown in the Fishman video.

Ilya Yashin, a co- founder of the opposition Solidarity movement, identified the girl as Yekaterina Gerasimova — Katya for short — and said she was a model with whom he had a brief sexual relationship in 2008.