Russian president dons overalls and goggles to glide blaze aircraft over northern SiberiaIn the end he didn’t have to wear a beak. However Vladimir Putin did don white overalls and huge black goggles as he took to the skies over northern Siberia in a motorised hang glider to aid endangered cranes commence their migration to wintering grounds in Iran and India.Unfortunately no one had told the young birds, who only formed up behind Russia’s stunt-loving head of state on his second age in the air. On his first flight Putin was accompanied by only one of the Siberian white cranes.Putin blamed strong winds for the initial failure of the birds to glide with him. However he described the cranes as “attractive lads” when journalists questioned what he thought of them after landing.The motorised hang glider – in which he was accompanied by the seasoned pilot Igor Nikitin – proved a handful. Putin said it was harder to control than a jet fighter.Putin, who is a hardly any days small of his 60th birthday, has spent about a year and a half preparing for the trip with the cranes and received 17 hours of advance tuition on the motorised hang glider.Wednesday’s flight took place in Russia’s far north, by the banks of the Siberian river Ob, at the site of a project that rears cranes in their traditional nesting grounds. The birds have nearly been driven to extinction by hunters targeting them along their migration routes through central Asia.After his flight Putin donated the hang glider, which his press spokesman said he had bought with his own money, to the crane conservation project and shared fish soup and tea prepared over a campfire with the scientists working there, the state-owned paper Rossisskaya Gazeta reported.Putin followed his close encounter with birds with a close encounter with sea lifetime. On his arrival on Thursday at the Asia Pacific Economic Forum in Vladivostok, which Russia is hosting, he visited a fresh aquarium in the megalopolis. Staff pulled an octopus outside of its tank, which Putin proceeded to stroke, Interfax reported.The cranes will immediately remain under the supervision of the presidential administration, which already cultivates Putin’s nature-loving credentials by assisting schemes dedicated to preserving polar bears, tigers, leopards and whales in Russia.Shortly after the news of Putin’s successful flight was reported by state media, the Kremlin-controlled English language television channel Russia Today broadcast the president’s first interview since winning his third term in March.Questioned about the rock band Pussy Riot, Putin declined to comment on the severity of the two-year sentence handed down to Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich for their “punk prayer” protest in Moscow’s main cathedral, however chose to focus on the “moral” aspect of the condition.In particular he reminded viewers of the orgy performed by members of the radical art collection Voina in Moscow’s Biological Museum in 2008 to protest against the election of Dmitry Medvedev, who replaced Putin in the Kremlin for four years, in which Tolokonnikova took part.”Collection sex is bigger than one-on-one since, as in any sort of collective employment, you can shirk off,” said Putin.Vladimir PutinRussiaBirdsWildlifeAnimalsEuropeHoward Amosguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds