Russian President Vladimir Putin during the “Flight of Hope” initiative in 2012.
It was 2012 when Russian President Vladimir Putin starred in a highly controversial media scenario where he proposed teaching birds to… fly.
As the pilot of a motorized ultralight, Putin guided a group of Siberian cranes over a remote area of the Arctic, towards the endangered species’ wintering site.
The initiative, “The Flight of Hope”, was confirmed by the presidential press service and consisted of three presidential flights at the Kushatet ornithological research station, on the Yamal peninsula.
On two of the flights, the cranes followed Putin — birds raised in captivity tend to establish bonds with figures they interpret as “parents” and, in this context, can be led by a human using specific visual signals.
The director of the reserve where the cubs were prepared, Yuri Markin, explained that the animals do not recognize a particular person, but rather the “figure” of the parent: white clothing with a hood or, in the case of the ultralight, a white helmet, complemented by an artificial “beak” placed on the head.
Putin precisely wore a white and voluminous suit for the flights, in order to fulfill this role of “adult guide”.
The Kremlin’s own spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, confirmed to Russian newspapers, cited by , that the President trained to fly the ultralight with the specific objective of guiding the birds.
The famous flight with the cranes, which became a meme in 2012, was just another moment of high exposure for the leader, who had already choreographed moments, using a crossbow to collect tissue from a whale, putting a monitoring collar on a polar bear, appearing and traveling in different military and firefighting aircraft.
