Vladimir Putin surprises a female Siberian student with flowers on her 23rd birthday but also comes face to face with a woolly mammoth.
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© Darya EfimovaVladimir Putin congratulated graduate Darya Efimova on her birthday and presented her flowers.
The Russian president visited Russia's largest region - the Sakha Republic - on Monday and was briefed on efforts by Siberian scientists to clone the extinct creature. In Yakutsk's world famous Mammoth Museum he saw the complete skeleton of the woolly mammoth.

'Soft tissues are preserved, so, it can be cloned?' asked the president. He was told Russian experts are working in close co-operation with their colleagues from South Korea. If successful, the beast could again roam Siberia for the first time since it became extinct in Wrangel Island in around 1650BC.

Mr Putin also met students and staff of the North-Eastern Federal University, congratulating them on the start of the new educational year, which is always marked in Russia on 1 September.

While opening the meeting, the president congratulated graduate student Darya Efimova on her birthday and presented her flowers.

He said: 'Darya has a birthday today. We congratulate you. Darya has double celebration today - the beginning of new academic year too.'

He added: 'We have such a nice, beautiful tradition - celebrating the beginning of the school year as a national holiday. This is a good and useful tradition because we once again emphasise the attention given to education, and the importance of education in our country, in today's world'.
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© kremlin.ruRussian president with students and staff of the North-Eastern Federal University.
Putin also told the story about his first visit to Yakutsk, the coldest city in the world.

'I remember one of my first visits I was met on the street. There were two men without any coats, just in suits. It was minus 50C degrees on the street. I almost fell out of the bus, when I left it.

I said, 'What are you doing here?' - 'We meet you,' - they said, adding 'Listen, let's quickly go into the room'.

'Such people, of course, are capable of much.'

The president was mainly in Yakutsk in connection with Gazprom's launch of another mammoth venture - Gazprom's 3,000 kilometre pipeline called the Power of Siberia, taking gas supplies to China.

But the trip inevitably brought questions for the president on the acute crisis in Ukraine. Mr Putin called for 'common sense' to prevail without east and west engaging in mutually destructive sanctions. 'I hope that common sense will prevail... that we will work together normally and that we and our partners will not cause harm by poking at one another,' he said.

Questioned by the BBC, which followed the Russian leader to Siberia, he said: 'I believe the main reason is that the current Kiev authorities do not want to hold a substantial political dialogue with the eastern part of their country. I mean a substantial political dialogue.'

Mr Putin defended the Novorossiya militia for seeking to prevent the Ukrainian army attacking major cities and 'shooting at residential areas'.

'The aim of the militia is to push the armed forces and their artillery out to prevent them from firing at residential districts,' he said.