Politicians love to be shown kissing babies, but Russian President Vladimir Putin took on an altogether more slippery customer Friday by puckering up for a fish.
The Kremlin leader, who is due to step down at the end of his second term next March, looked every bit the seasoned campaigner when he lifted the sturgeon at a fish farm in southern Russia and gave the creature a peck on the head.
Onlookers at the farm in Selo Ikryanoye, near Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea, applauded when Putin, who was wearing white gloves, then dropped the sturgeon into the sea.
The fish farm is part of efforts to regenerate the Caspian’s endangered sturgeons, prized for their tiny black eggs used to make caviar.
