Nature Lover Vladimir Putin Flies With the Cranes

Hugh Pickens writes "Russian President Vladimir Putin is a nature lover. In 2007, the bare-chested president rode a horse through Siberia. In 2008, he fired a tranquilizer gun at a rare Siberian tiger. In 2010, he used a crossbow to shoot darts at an enormous whale in a fog-shrouded bay to collect tissue samples. Now Der Spiegel reports that on his way east to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Putin stopped at the Arctic Circle to fulfill a mission for which the Kremlin says he prepared assiduously for a year and a half: helping to save an endangered species of crane. In a meadow some 2,000 kilometers northeast of Moscow, Putin donned a white jumpsuit and black aviator goggles before swinging himself into the seat of an ultralight aircraft and as loudspeakers played the recorded call of a mother crane, Putin lifted off and a group of orphaned white Siberian cranes followed, allowing the aircraft to lead them south toward their winter habitat. On the first attempt, only one of the young cranes followed him up, which Putin said was because a high tail wind had caused the hang glider to accelerate too fast. On the second attempt, five birds followed Putin, but only two stuck with him for the full 15-minute flight. Putin's flight, given many minutes of airtime on Russian television, provoked an array of contemptuous jokes on the Internet, one of the most popular being: 'So Putin is off to wintering with cranes. Does this mean he's not going to be back before spring?' The Russian president, however, hit back at critics telling reporters at the conclusion of APEC summit that, 'It's true that not all flew right away, but the ones that didn't fly were the weak cranes' apparently alluding to the errant ways of those involved in protests that have hit Russia over the last year."

Comments

Re:Good ol' Putin

[udachny]

Anyone who thinks that life wasn't better in Russia in the 1970s eithe

- you are a pathetic individual, you shouldn't be called a human, you are slime.

Life in the 1970s in USSR? For who exactly? For the top party elite, yes. For the people in the concentration camps in the former USSR in 1970s? For the incarcerated in the mental institutions, because they were not in lockstep with the party in USSR in 1970s? For the young kids that were forced to march into Afghanistan in the late 1970s in the USSR?

For the people living on forver Soviet farms, resembling stone age villages in the 1970s (well, actually this part didn't change much since then).

Maybe it was for all the people whose dreams of becoming something more than just a fucking cog in that meat grinder?

I have no words to express my disgust with the slime like you.

Re:Unlikely as it seems

[udachny]

I am so happy that we are not in the same physical location right now, because I would definitely end up in jail, there is not even a question about it.