The worlds most adventurous (read: propaganda loving) president is at it again. In the past he has tranquilised tigers, shot crossbows and flown fighter jets, but this time Action Putin piloted a motorised hang glider over an Arctic wilderness leading six endangered Siberian cranes toward their winter habitat.

Putin is not the most popular leader, especially with young Russians. And though Putin’s press office said the operation, called “The Flight of Hope,” was simply about protecting these wild cranes, many already see it as just another propaganda act. Political cartoons are already circling, the most amusing goes: Mr. Putin looked at the crane and said, “I will save you!” The crane looked at the president and thought, “Maybe I’d better die out.”

Yuri Markin, the director of the game preserve that reared the chicks, told Russian News Service, a radio network: “They don’t remember a particular person. They remember the white robe and hood, or on the ultralight, a white helmet — and a special beak that is worn on the head.” It seems that Putin did not wear the beak, but did don the white billowy robe.

This was too good an opportunity for Putin’s critics not to throw a jab or two; I mean the man was in a freaking bird suit. The New York Times reports how Aleksei Navalny, “an opposition leader and blogger, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday: ‘About Stalin they said, ‘In the night a light will burn in the window.’ And of Putin they will say, ‘He flew over our homes with a flock of cranes.’”

Putin loves to be the action man figure. In the past he has tranquilised a tiger, used a crossbow to extract tissue from a whale and put a tracking collar on a polar bear, appeared shirtless riding a horse in Siberia, flown on a fighter jet, a bomber and an amphibious firefighting airplane. Now I am no fan of the mans politics – FREE PUSSY RIOT – but it would be great to see our own JZ making headlines for shooting at rhino poachers rather than marrying his upteenth wife.

The Cranes thank you Vladimir. Now all we have to do is wait for the Fly Away Home memes.

[Source: New York Times]