Russian leaders are trained as warriors.
If you really want to become a governor in Russia, you'll probably have to jump off a cliff nearly ten meters high to prove your bravery.
"Another governor resigns by order of President Putin."
According to RT, Russia's future governors demonstrated their toughness by jumping off a 7-meter-high cliff in Sochi in early October. "This is a good team-building activity," the Gazeta news site quoted Sergey Kiriyenko, First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Kremlin, as saying.
Cliff jumping is part of the "canyon" program, a nine-month training project for high-ranking regional officials of the Russian government. The "canyon" program is extremely demanding, requiring participants to navigate canyons on their own without the aid of special flotation devices, RT reports.
"Participants have to wade into the river, cross obstacles, and jump off a cliff... It's a test of people's reaction in tense situations," a media representative of the National School of Economics and Public Administration of the Russian Presidential Academy, the co-organizer of the training program, told RIA Novosti.
According to Gazeta, cliff jumping was not a mandatory challenge; some officials were unable to participate in the program due to work commitments.
The RBC news agency confirmed that Mikhail Kotyukov, Director of the Russian Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations, and Aleksandr Burkov, the newly appointed Governor of the Omsk region, also appeared in the video.
This is the first year the training program has been held, but the Russian Presidential Academy says it will take place annually. The program includes lectures, consultations, and physical activities as Moscow aims to improve the leadership skills, negotiation abilities, and teamwork skills of future governors.
The Kremlin began replacing a number of governors last September and appointed new leaders for regions in the Republic of Dagestan, the Samara region, Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk, and several others.
According to VNN