The Kremlin hosts a reception at the Constantine Palace in St. Petersburg to celebrate the president’s 70th anniversary away from cameras and reporters
Kremlin spokesmen always tend to underline the “private” nature of the birthday celebrations of President Vladimir Putin, who turned 70 this Friday. Occasionally, information about the venue and partygoers was leaked. But this time, because of the war in Ukraine and especially because of the controversy and criticism about the unfavorable course of the conflict, some Russian publications assured, citing presidency sources, that the top Russian leader had decided to refrain from commemorating commemorations. , even in the case of his 70th birthday, an important event in a person’s life.
However, not celebrating anything would have been a clear sign that things are not going well. So, Putin gathered on Friday in the opulent setting of the Palace of Constantine, in Saint Petersburg, an “informal” summit of heads of state of the barely functioning Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the structure created after the breakup of the USSR with the vain intention of maintaining some cohesion between the former Soviet republics.
But not even all the leaders of these republics were present, a group that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were never part of. They avoided meeting with Georgia, Moldova and, of course, Ukraine. Nor was Kyrgyzstan, whose president, Sadir Zhaparov, limited himself to sending a congratulatory telegram.
For example, except for Putin, only presidents Nikol Pashinyan (Armenia), Ilham Aliev (Azerbaijan), Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus), Kasim-Zhomart Tokayev (Kazakhstan), Emomali Rachmon (Tajikistan) and Serdar Berdimukhamedov (Turkmenistan) attended the summit. ). ).
The meeting started around noon and lasted until lunch. The Russian president thanked them for coming and identified the topics to be discussed; one of them had to do with security. “Indeed, in addition to Ukraine, where truly tragic events are taking place, unfortunately sometimes conflicts arise between other nearby states of the post-Soviet space, and this, of course, requires the development of measures to resolve them,” Putin said. against those Gift.
Then, in the afternoon, the actual birthday party took place, apparently attended by many other guests. Probably the oligarchs closest to the president and other people close to him. But neither the cameras nor the reporters had access. The honorary member received numerous gifts, including a tractor that Lukashenko had brought from his country, and according to the Kremlin, he received many congratulations by phone, including from abroad, as was the case with North Korea’s presidents Kim Jong-un; Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez; South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa; Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan; and Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.
All over Russia there were concentrations in honor of the head of state, the largest, in Chechnya. The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, honored him by saying that “God has given you the power to carry out a mission of special importance and great responsibility to the country and its people.” Last year, Putin’s birthday was marred by the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize to the director of the Russian opposition newspaper ‘Nóvaya Gazeta’, Dmitri Muratov, and this year the same has happened as the anti-Stalinist NGO and human rights defender Humans Memorial winner of the same prize from the prestigious Norwegian committee.
Source: La Verdad
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