Photo Gallery Russia's Superman
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has long sought to hone an image as a tough outdoorsman. Here, he is seen fishing with President Dmitry Medvedev in one of his tamer such photos to date.
In addition to being at one with nature, Putin likes to show just how much of a man he is -- like here during an August effort to bend a frying pan.
Putin also made a recent visit to an annual motorcycle festival held by the "Night Wolves." Putin is riding a Harley Davidson trike.
Many of Putin's outings, of course, are just part of his job -- such as inspecting tanks. Here, he looks into the cockpit of a T-90AM during a trip to the Urals in early September.
But Putin is at his happiest when he is demonstrating just how tough he is. Here, he takes part in a Judo training session in St. Petersburg last December.
Vladimir Putin had a difficult summer in 2010. Wildfires across large parts of the country made his government seem impotent and the response to the conflagrations did not reflect well on Russian officialdom. But a bit of whale hunting -- to collect skin samples -- was enough to correct his public image.
In choppy waters, it took Putin a few shots to finally hit the whale. "I hit it at the fourth try!" a beaming Putin shouted to a camera crew.
Also in 2010, Putin went to the South Kamchatka Sanctuary for a bit of wildlife spotting.
Here, Putin steers a boat as a bear wades in the shallow shore waters. Putin's media style in recent years has evolved into an apparent effort to seem everywhere at once. His macho image is one that has buoyed his political career.
Here, Putin visits the joint Russian-German scientific expedition called "Lena-2010" on Samoilovsky Island in the far east.
In the summer of 2010, with wildfires raging across Russia, many criticized the official response, saying the authorities were slow to realize the scope of the problem and did too little to fight the fires. Putin climbed into the co-pilot's seat of a firefighting plane in an effort to counter the criticism.
He also took a closer look at the fire damage as part of his effort to appear in control of the situation.
Recent months and years have seen Putin seek out a variety of striking photo ops. Here, he climbs into the cockpit of a new fighter jet, the Sukhoi T-50, in June, 2010. Though he is no longer Russian president, Prime Minister Putin has been at pains to show that he remains in charge.
Not all of his photo ops are of the macho variety. Here, he bottle feeds an elk in the Losiny Ostrov national park in Moscow in June.
Putin's favorite kind of photo op, though, shows him as a rugged outdoorsman. Here, he is seen resting in a tree during a fishing trip in the Siberian region of Tuva in the summer of 2009.
His 2009 fishing trip recalled Putin's perhaps most famous foray into the great outdoors. In August of 2007 he went on a trip to Tuva with Prince Albert II of Monaco and was photographed catching this fish.
Just a couple of days later, however, Putin was all alone and bare chested as he casted into the Khemchik River. The pictures went around the world.
Prior to fishing, however, Putin did a bit of shirtless hunting on the same trip.
Never one to overdress, Putin pulled the shirtless routine again during this horseback ride in 2009, again in Tuva, Siberia.
In 2006, Putin inspected the shooting gallery in the new GRU military intelligence headquarters building in Moscow.
Ever on the job, this video grab shows Putin looking out of the Mir-2 mini-submarine in Lake Baikal in 2009. Putin also has a black belt in judo.
In 2008, Putin shot a tiger with a tranquilizer dart prior to fitting the animal with a tracking collar. News reports indicated that Putin's quick shot prevented a camera team from being mauled by the beast.
In April of this year, Putin took this polar bear into his arms to help attach a tracking collar to the animal.
The message that Putin is presumably trying to impart: omnipresence. Here, he is on a television talk show in 2009.
