Creams massage and police escort: how Russian whales were freed

Whales were massaged and lathered in special balm as they rode toward the ocean in a motorcade as part of their release from a "jail" in the Russian far east, the institute overseeing the operation said Thursday. Two killer whales and six beluga whales were freed last week after months of captivity and a public backlash that eventually saw President Vladimir Putin endorse their release. "The hardest thing in the release was that nobody has done this before," said the director of the All-Russian Fisheries and Oceanography Institute (VNIRO), Kirill Kolonchin.