MOSCOW — Start with manly ventures — flying, hunting, scuba-diving. Add
an element of danger — polar bears, tigers, fighter jets. Throw in a
bare chest here and there.
In Russian politics,
Vladimir Putin is both the star of the show and the stuntman.
The Russian president’s flight Wednesday in a motorized hang glider
purportedly helped young white Siberian cranes learn how to migrate. But
it also was the latest in a dozen-year series of telegenic escapades.
GALLERY: VLADIMIR PUTIN IN ACTION: FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
The media events portray him as both exceptionally bold and just a
regular guy who enjoys proletarian pastimes like hunting and fishing.
Although critics say Putin is tremendously wealthy, his stunts are
careful to avoid any suggestion of riches. Putin — unlike John Kerry —
will never be filmed going windsurfing.
Putin is even willing to show a vulnerable side. He confessed that the
hang glider’s veering and yawing “gets the adrenaline going” and once
was filmed being thrown to the mat by a 10-year-old Japanese girl who
was a judo expert.
RIA NOVOSTI/REUTERS
Vladimir Putin sits in a motorized deltaplane near a crane at Yamalo-Nenets district September 5, 2012.
Some of Putin’s notable stunts:
TOP GUN
Putin and George W. Bush may have had little in common, but they both
understood that showing up in a fighter jet makes a dramatic entrance.
Putin did it first, in March 2000, flying into war-torn Chechnya in the rear seat of a Sukhoi-27 advanced fighter jet.
Coming just a few days before Russia’s presidential election, the stunt
aimed to bolster Putin’s image as the man who could wipe out the
Chechen separatists, in contrast to predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who had
allowed Chechnya to become virtually independent and gruesomely lawless.
© Reuters Photographer / Reuters/REUTERS
Television image shows acting Russian President Vladimir Putin sitting in the cockpit of a Sukhoi-27 fighter jet.
SEABED FIND
The low point of Putin’s stunts may have been his 2011 scuba dive in
the strait connecting the Black and Azov seas. He came up from the dive
holding fragments of what were said to be 6th century B.C. Greek jugs,
saying “the boys and I found them.”
Critics snorted. The seabed was only about seven feet deep and the
likelihood that the fragments had hidden in plain sight for more than
2,500 years seemed slim. Some joked that Putin’s staff had bought the
pottery at IKEA.
A few months later, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted the jug fragments had been planted.
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