Vladimir Putin helped release rare, orphaned Amur tigers into the wild on Thursday, the latest of several events apparently meant to portray the Russian president as an outdoorsman with a strong interest in wildlife conservation. Russian TV footage showed Putin, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, tugging on a rope to help open a gate and let the tigers – two males and a female – lope off into the wooded taiga of the remote Amur region in eastern Siberia. The males were found as cubs in 2012, presumably orphaned when poachers killed their mothers, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which helped organize what it called the largest release of rehabilitated Amur tigers ever.
Russia’s Putin helps release tigers into wild
