Moscow - Russian President Vladimir Putin has no plans to attend a planned forum in Berlin on Nov. 7-9 marking the 25th anniversary of the breaching of the Berlin Wall, his spokesman said in a radio program on Nov. 6.
“This neither was nor is in [his] plans,” Dmitry Peskov told Russian News Service.
Russia will be represented at the New Politics forum by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev took part in highest-level events marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2009, when he was president. He had been invited to the celebrations by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Gorbachev had told Interfax earlier on Thursday that he would defend Russia’s current policies at the New Politics forum.
“Of course, I will use the 25th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall as an occasion for campaigning against any more walls, not only stone but also psychological and general human walls. As the wise cat said in one of the children’s fairy tales, we should live as friends,” he said.
“Both at the forum and in my conversations with leaders and public figures, I will take a firm position in defending Russia, and hence defending its president, Vladimir Putin. I’m absolutely convinced that Putin is the best defender of Russian interests today. Of course, there’s enough about his policies that a critic can take him up on. But I won’t do that, nor do I want others to,” Gorbachev said.
