ST. PETERSBURG (dpa-AFX) – Under the impression of the war in Ukraine, the Russian President Wladimir Putin celebrated his 70th birthday with heads of state from former Soviet republics. Conflicts that need to be resolved are brewing not only in Ukraine but also in other former Soviet republics, Putin said on Friday in the Constantine Palace in St. Petersburg. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan were present there at an “informal summit” of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are enemies and were recently at war over the conflict region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus. Regarding the war of aggression he launched against Ukraine in February, Putin said that “tragic events are actually taking place there.” Hundreds of towns and villages were destroyed and thousands of people, including hundreds of children, were killed in the Russian invasion.
Putin also received the ruler of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, who is making the country’s military bases available for the attacks on Ukraine. While Lukashenko presented Putin with a voucher for a “hand-assembled” tractor made locally and Tajikistan’s head of state Emomali Rahmon brought mountains of watermelons and honeydew melons as a gift, human rights activists from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine were announced in Oslo as the new Nobel Peace Prize winners .
This year’s award, which is seen as a sign against war, goes to Belarusian human rights lawyer Ales Byalyatski and two human rights organizations, Memorial from Russia and the Center for Civil Liberties from Ukraine. Already last year, when the editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-critical newspaper “Novaya Gazeta”, Dmitry Muratov, received the Nobel Peace Prize, Putin himself did not comment publicly on the matter.
The head of the Kremlin celebrated his birthday in his hometown on the Gulf of Finland not only with Lukashenko, who is notorious as Europe’s last dictator, but also with numerous other heads of state who are internationally criticized for violating human rights. In addition to Aliyev from Azerbaijan and Rahmon from Tajikistan, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev also attended the meeting.
Putin wanted to show once again that despite the sanctions imposed by the West because of Russia’s war against Ukraine, he is not isolated internationally. In the coming week, the head of the Kremlin plans to travel to Kazakhstan to take part in the first Russia-Central Asia summit in the capital Astana on October 14.
In addition to numerous congratulations on his anniversary, Putin also received spiritual support. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, called for prayer for the Kremlin chief, who is also the supreme commander in the war against Ukraine. “God has placed you at the helm of power so that you can perform a service of particular importance and great responsibility for the fate of the country and the people entrusted to you,” Kirill said in his telegram of congratulations.
In a letter to the priesthood, the church leader also called for two days of prayer for Putin’s health and longevity. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also called him on his birthday and congratulated him, as the Kremlin announced. The presidential administration meticulously listed who else congratulated. The list, which also included North Korean ruler Kim Jong-Un, remained manageable.
The head of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, who ruled with an iron hand and was criticized for the most serious crimes against humanity, recorded a long congratulatory video in the North Caucasus. Putin played a key role in the history of the Chechen people and freed the region from terror, said the 46-year-old. The head of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, added his congratulations with the line: “As long as there is Putin, there is Russia”./bal/DP/ngu