Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko presented Russian President Vladimir Putin with a tractor on his 70th birthday. He announced this during an informal meeting of the heads of the CIS countries in the Konstantinovsky Palace in St. Petersburg, writes BelTA.
According to Lukashenko, Putin got a hand-built Belarus tractor. “The one I work for,” the Belarusian president specified. He added that of all the possible attachments, he brought Putin a seeder.
“I will offer him one attachment – a hitch – a seeder. We will sow bread. May be something else. She is universal. Grow up and [президенту Польши Анжею] Dude, [премьер-министру Польши Матеушу] Morawiecki, Europe is there so that they do not starve. So that they don’t steal bread in Ukraine, but bring it to poor countries,” Lukashenka said.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon presented another gift to Putin – he brought watermelons and melons to the informal CIS summit, which were collected in giant pyramids near the Konstantinovsky Palace. “Carpets” were laid out from other fruits.
The Kremlin press service claims that the Russian president receives “numerous congratulatory messages and telegrams from the heads of state and government of foreign countries.” At the same time, a message on the president’s website indicates that only one former head of state, ex-president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, and four current ones congratulated Putin over the phone:
- President of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Japarov;
- Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez;
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan;
- South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
In 2021 and 2020, Putin received telephone congratulations from 12 current and former heads of state, according to the Kremlin.
According to journalists from the Kremlin pool, the leaders of North Korea and Nicaragua also congratulated the president.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, in a congratulatory message published on the website of the country’s government, said that he was looking forward to “continuing a constructive dialogue and active joint work” between Moscow and Yerevan. In September, Yerevan was dissatisfied with Moscow’s reaction to the escalation conflict with Azerbaijan and threatened withdraw from the CSTO, which, instead of military assistance, limited itself to a statement in which it expressed “concern” about the aggravation of the situation and brought “condolences” to Armenia.
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu on Twitter wished Putin to spend his next birthday “behind bars” and called for the creation of a tribunal to try the organizers of the invasion of Ukraine.
On Putin’s birthday, Czech Defense Minister Yana Chernokhova called him “one of the most important criminals of our time.”