In early September 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin took part in an experiment to rescue white cranes by flying a hang glider. The reaction to such a step by the head of state was mixed.
Not so long ago, a whole range of measures was launched in the Far East to save the endangered species of cranes - the Siberian Cranes, of which there are only about 3 thousand left. And although the Oksky Nature Reserve has existed since 1979, where rare birds have been bred, their population has been steadily declining over the past thirty years. The difficulty in breeding Siberian Cranes is that they need to be raised so that they can adapt in the wild.
Russian ornithologists have adopted the experience of their American colleagues, who first came up with the idea of releasing a hang-glider in front of cranes settling in the wild. His task was to show the correct path along which the flock should migrate for the winter. In early summer, Moscow was visited by the head of the All-Russian Fund for the Protection of Cranes, which cooperates with the Itera oil company, which received an order from the president to tackle the problem of the disappearance of Siberian Cranes.
Vladimir Putin decided to personally contribute to the preservation of the endangered species of cranes and took to the air on a hang glider, personally pointing the way to the south for the Siberian Cranes. The world community took this fact quite warmly, but the Russians subjected the president's act to ridicule, especially the users of the Russian-speaking Internet did not restrain themselves in the comments.
According to political analysts, the president was forced to take such a step to strengthen his own image as the leader of a nuclear power. He managed to raise his rating among the European political elite, which especially played into the hands of the president ahead of the next Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
The participation of Putin in such an action was greeted by the Russians with surprise and undisguised sarcasm. The president’s press secretary said that the creation of cartoons and open aggression against the president’s act speaks of the country's unwillingness to accept new social and political trends coming from the West.
