If you're visiting Russia in the near future, and plan on attending a soccer game..... don't.
:stongue: Love the guy at the very end that smokes the security guard with the chair.
leph555
Heavyweight Champion Flees Psychiatric Hospital
quote:
Vyacheslav Datsik, a world heavyweight champion in mixed martial arts and an icon among ultranationalists, has escaped from a psychiatric hospital and possibly robbed a St. Petersburg cell phone shop, news reports said Tuesday.
A self-confessed pagan, Datsik made a name for himself in the martial arts world before his career was cut short in 2007 when he was arrested for robbing several St. Petersburg cell phone shops.
A court ruled Datsik to be insane and placed him in a prison psychiatric hospital. He was transferred from the hospital to a regular psychiatric facility in the Leningrad region last month.
On Saturday, Datsik tore a hole in a wire fence with his bare hands and fled the facility, news reports said.
A man who looked like him robbed a St. Petersburg cell phone shop of about 7,000 rubles ($226) and a cell phone on Sunday, Fontanka.ru reported.
Datsik, 30, nicknamed “Red Tarzan,” won admiration among ultranationalists with charismatic speeches that promoted white racial supremacy, a law enforcement source told Komsomolskaya Pravda.
MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin fired darts from a crossbow at a gray whale off Russia's Far Eastern coast on Wednesday in the latest in a series of man-versus-nature stunts designed to cultivate the image of a macho leader.
Putin held his balance in a rubber boat that was being tossed around in choppy waters off the Kamchatka Peninsula, and eventually hit the whale with a special arrow designed to collect skin samples.
"I hit it at the fourth try!" a beaming Putin, kitted out in black-and-orange waterproof suit and black beanie, yelled to a camera crew from the boat.
A biologist with him displayed the skin sample and said it would allow experts to determine where the whale came from.
When the boat skidded onto the beach, a bouyant Putin hopped off and made a beeline for waiting reporters. Clearly in his element, Putin replied jovially to a question as to whether the endeavor was dangerous.
"Living in general is dangerous," he quipped. Asked why he got involved, he simply said, "Because I like it. I love the nature."
But nature may be under threat by a seismic survey being conducted nearby by Russia's top oil company, Rosneft. The International Fund for Animal Welfare released a statement on Wednesday condemning the 2-month, pre-drilling survey as potentially damaging to the gray whales. In the course of exploration, oil companies use seismic air guns and other sources to produce pulses of acoustic energy through the water. Scientists say this is damaging to much marine life, and the timing is bad for the whales, which are currently in a narrow feeding window to store fat for the entire year.
Putin, meanwhile, during his eight years as president and the past two as prime minister, has learned to use television to cultivate the image of a rugged leader beloved by the Russian people.
His mastery of the medium has been on full display in recent weeks as he has taken command of efforts to extinguish the wildfires that swept across much of western Russia and to help the thousands of people who lost their homes.
The message has been that it is Putin, rather than his junior co-leader President Dmitry Medvedev, who is equipped to look after Russia, its people and environment. Putin has been canny about his plans to run in the 2012 presidential election, but has excluded running against Medvedev, saying the two will come to an agreement. Whatever the decision, his action-man lifestyle shows he is not about to recede from public view.
He has been photographed fishing bare-chested in Russia's Altai region, and was shown on television diving into an icy river and swimming the butterfly stroke.
In April he attached a satellite-tracking collar on a tranquilized polar bear. He also has shot a Siberian tiger with a tranquilizer gun and released leopards into a wildlife sanctuary.
