Putin's siberian Tiger defects to China ... !!

Adimai Penn (a Slave girl) directed by K Shankar featuring MGR and J Jayalalithaa, SA Ashokan, RS Manohar, Chandrababu and Cho, released in 1969 was much talked about movie.

Oct 7^th was the 62^nd  birth day of  Russian President Vladimir Putin.  In the present scenario, he chose to make it a low-key affair; reportedly spending the day in remote Siberia, about 200 miles away from the nearest town. His spokesperson said the president was planning to "rest" and wouldn't disclose who, if anyone, was invited to the quiet birthday party. Across his vast country, however, Putin's adoring citizens (he held a whopping87 percent approval rating this summer) celebrated his birth with everything from artwork to infographics to grand marches honoring their leader.  In Grozny, Chechnya, thousands gathered to form an almost 2,000-foot-long Russian flag with their bodies.

The Amur River or Heilong Jiang  is the world's tenth longest river, forming the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China. The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur tiger, is a tiger subspecies inhabiting mainly the Sikhote Alin mountain region.  The declining population has been a  cause of concern for many. 

In 2008, the Russian prime minister Putin was visiting the Ussuri reserve in Siberia, observing how researchers monitor the tigers in the wild, when a trapped beast escaped and charged towards a nearby camera crew. The macho Putin quickly shot the beast and sedated it with a tranquilizer gun. Footage of the former KGB spy, who has cultivated a macho image showed him striding through the taiga in camouflage and desert boots before grappling with the tiger.  A few years later, however, the story of his protecting the TV crew shooting the tiger with a tranquilliser gun was questioned with some  environmentalists stating that  the tiger Putin shot was no wild tiger at all – and that the animal died as a result of the stunt. The newspaper reports stated that  the tiger, named Serga, was taken from a zoo in the eastern city of Khabarovsk and driven several hundred miles to the Ussuri nature reserve, where Putin had flown to check on efforts to monitor the amur tiger, a cause he had taken under his personal control. She was tranquillised, placed in a snare and forced to lie in wait as the infamously tardy leader got to the site, and in the days that followed  the rare tiger died, unable to recover from the three tranquillisers used by scientists during the PR stunt.

Now Putin and Tiger are in news again – this time defection – of a tagged tiger.   This time environmentalists are worried that the endangered animal may run into danger in the southern Chinese provinces, where villagers are known to hunt down tigers for preying on their livestock, an official from Russia's nature watchdog was quoted as saying. It is all about a Siberian tiger called Kuzya released into the wild by Vladimir Putin that  has defected - to China. Satellite tracking signals from a special collar shows that he swam across the Amur River border on Sunday, newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported. Ecologists say that the endangered Amur tiger was probably looking for better nutrition but there are now fears for his safety after he left the Jewish Automomous Republic in the Russian Far East. The deputy head of natural resources management in the republic,  is quoted as saying that China will be informed about President Putin's tiger via Foreign Affairs ministry channels but time is needed for this information to reach local ecologists, and before then the tiger may well alarm the local villagers and may even suffer.

Putin released Kuzya - then 19 months old - and two other tigers into the wild on 22 May in a remote area of Amur region. Kuzya  reportedly was the bravest one and was the first to escape to the wild taiga, the natural habitat of the species ~ and it is stated that 'Kuzya knows how to avoid people and did so well in Russia but in that agricultural area of China, it will be hard for him.' The other two tigers - Borya, Kuzya's brother, and Ilona - remain in the Amur region of Russia according to the satellite tracking data while Kuzya swam across the Amur River border with China on Sunday

The MGR movie Adimai Penn is touted for the fight with lion.  It is stated that MGR had a lion as a pet (bought for the movie !) – and the fight sequence impressed Raj Kapoor so much.  A stuffed lion stands in the MGR memorial (this photo taken from MGR memorial website)

With regards – S. Sampathkumar.

9^th Oct 2014.