Putin to get vaccinated; Navalny talks about life in a penal colony
Putin’s holiday in the Siberian taiga seems to put to rest rumours about his poor health. Alexey Navalny speaks about what he loves the most in a penal colony in Pokrov, namely the national anthem and the inmates’ march.
Moscow (AsiaNews) – Russian President Vladimir Putin announced today that he will get the COVID-19 vaccine. The decision seems to refute rumours about his poor health and early Parkinson's disease.
Such rumours have been around for more than a year. Almost to refute them, the president has been showing himself off in good shape in recent days along with his loyal defence minister, Sergey Shoygu, relaxing in the Siberian taiga with the briefcase with the nuclear codes.
The Russian president will get “one of the Russian vaccines”, but not necessarily Sputnik V. For Putin, “no other foreign preparation shows as much efficacy as ours.” In addition to Sputnik, Novosibirsk's EpiVak-Korona and Moscow's Kovi-Vak have been approved in Russia.
The announcement is designed to boost the vaccination campaign, which began in the country at the end of December 2020, but has been coming along rather slowly.
Most Russians are not keen on the drug. So far, fewer than seven million (4.4 per cent of the population) have been vaccinated, compared to 22 per cent of Americans.
On the holiday in Tuva on 20-21 March, in south-central Siberia near the border with Mongolia, Putin wore special Siberian equipment to deal with the extreme cold, noting that “in Siberia you cannot go only with trousers, slippers and overcoat”.
The president and Shoygu travelled on a special vehicle, then took a long walk in the open air at minus 20 Celsius. Shoygu, a native of the Tuva area, showed his boss his ability to create art with twigs and pieces of wood.
Back in Moscow yesterday, Putin was ready for the “face-to-face conversation” with US President Joe Biden, which he had proposed after the two traded accusations last week.
The US Department of State turned down the request. Russian Foreign Ministry released a note saying: “One more opportunity has been missed to find a way out of the deadlock in Russian-US relations created through the fault of Washington. Responsibility for this lies entirely with the United States.”
Navalny's tale
As Putin strolled in the Siberian taiga, Alexei Navalny, his main domestic enemy, managed to get a letter out that was posted on his Instagram profile.
The text expands on the account of his detention at the IK-2 penal colony in Pokrov, Vladimir Oblast (region). In it he says that “there are two moments in the day that I love here: the first is when they play the national anthem at 6.00 am. All lined up around the shacks, in the prison black overalls, immersed in the darkness of the morning, standing with their hands behind their backs, and the loudspeaker suddenly explodes with the words: Glory to our free homeland! It's a real blast...”.
Navalny's second favourite moment is the last of the mandatory morning exercises, when inmates “all march together, banging their boots. At that moment I feel like I'm on the set of a Russian remake of the Star Wars movie, where, in lieu of imperial stormtroopers, we have the Zeki (prison inmates) in their jackets and ushanka (fur hat), with cigarettes in their mouths, iron pickaxes instead of laser rifles. May the force be with you! Greetings from our friendly penal colony.”
Although the leader of the opposition is held in a concentration camp, his plans for an anti-Putin political coalition continues, although many of his associates have also been arrested.
The best confirmation of the effectiveness of the initiative comes from a statement by Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, a Putin loyalist, who on Monday slammed Navalny's “useful vote” on his Telegram channel.
According to Volodin, behind this project “are foreign governments and their special services . . . It is a contentless project, which does not help solve citizens' problems, but [it is meant] only to take power.”
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17/06/2021 14:37
22/02/2021 15:10
