As of: February 22, 2024, 8:16 p.m
By: Lisa Mahnke
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Split
Putin surprises with a bomber trip.
The message shortly before the presidential election and in the middle of the Ukraine war is clear.
Kazan – Russian President Vladimir Putin sat in the cockpit of a TU-160M bomber, according to official information.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Putin spontaneously made the decision to undertake the thirty-minute flight in a supersonic bomber on Thursday (February 22) the day before.
The route is a military secret.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin boss had already visited the aviation factory in Kazan and sat in the cockpit of the bomber.
“We are receiving new technology, super technology,” Putin said after the flight and ordered the armed forces to take over the modernized Soviet bomber.
“This is actually a new machine, new in many ways.
It is easier to control and can even be seen with the naked, unprofessional eye.
Reliability is very high, it is armed.
This is a new aircraft,” the Russian president noted.
However, Putin certainly had not only the bomber's technology in mind when flying, but also the symbolism of a strong man.
Not the first military production: Putin is a frequent flyer
While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj visits military bases and appears in the media, Russia's president has so far avoided traveling to the front.
The production could also have been intended for the presidential election in mid-March, even if his victory there is already considered certain.
Putin (right) flew for half an hour in a TU160-M, as an official photo from the presidential office is said to show.
© AFP PHOTO / RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS OFFICE
Putin may have had a similar goal during his first flight in a military aircraft.
This took place shortly before his first presidential election in March 2000, when he was a co-pilot in a Su-27 fighter plane - at the time against the backdrop of the ongoing second Chechen war.
Even after that, the Russian president sat in other fighter jets, including the old version of the TU-160.
Putin, the strong and masculine?
Russia's president likes to put himself in the spotlight
In the past, Putin has attracted attention not only in military staging, but also in shirtless photos.
The background is the same in both cases: the symbolism as an alpha male, as a dominant politician, as a figure of strength.
There is a photo montage of the Kremlin leader riding a grizzly bear, pictures of Putin fishing or on a horse.
“There are also pictures of US President Theodore Roosevelt with a lion killed by his own hands or of Barack Obama in swimming trunks in the Gulf of Mexico.
“I don’t see anything offensive in that,” Putin told the US magazine
Outdoor Life
in 2011. “‘Moderate’ hunting is one of the original human traditions,” continued the Russian president, who was briefly out of office at the time.
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Shortly before the Russian election, Putin seems to want to put himself in the spotlight again, probably not least because of the increasing dissatisfaction with the war in Russia.
(dpa/lismah)