Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 13 – Dmitry Peskov,
Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, said that the Kremlin leader would have been
delighted to welcome US President Donald Trump and the leaders of leading Western
countries to the opening ceremony of the World Cup in Moscow tomorrow.
But it is a measure of Moscow’s
continuing isolation, despite the best efforts of itself and some in the West,
that besides seven leaders of CIS countries (Armenia, Belarus, Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and of the two
unrecognized states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it has been able to attract no
leader from a major power.
Instead, the best the Kremlin could
do in this critically important instance was to attract the leaders of Rwanda,
Bolivia, Lebanon, Panama and Paraguay, hardly those of the rank that Putin and
his spokesman have made clear they wanted (polit.ru/news/2018/06/13/peskov/
and
This will embarrass the Kremlin in
the eyes of its own people who are already upset by the competition’s costs and
the inconveniences it has imposed on them. One measure of the latter is that in
the last two weeks, Russians searching on line have sought to find out what the
Kremlin has banned during the World Cup (afterempire.info/2018/06/12/mundial/).
One
ban that has been suggested but not yet put in place highlights the problems
the Kremlin faces. A Duma deputy has called on Russians “not to engage in intimate
relations with foreign guests”, lest there be an upsurge in Russian single
mothers as after the 1980 Olympics (znak.com/2018-06-13/v_gosdume_poprosili_rossiyanok_ne_vstupat_v_intimnye_otnosheniya_s_gostyami_chm_po_futbolu).
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