Vladimir Putin sends greetings to Russian concert held in the ruins of Palmyra

Russian President Vladimir Putin has delivered an address broadcast from Russia at the start of the Russian concert held amidst the ruins of Palmyra that has been liberated from the ISIS militants. It was a Russian classical music concert and the venue was the ruins of Palmyra which was the scene of mass executions staged by Islamic State militants less than a year ago.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 5 May 2016.

The concert was conducted by Valery Gergiev led Saint Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra in the performance of pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergei Prokofiev and Rodion Shchedrin. In the audience were Russian soldiers, government ministers and foreign journalists brought in by the Kremlin. In his address, Russian President Vladimir Putin said - 'Thank you for today's amazing humanitarian act - the concert in a Palmyra liberated from terrorists'.
In the course of the concert, the cellist Sergei Roldugin played a solo against the backdrop of Palmyra's Roman amphitheatre. Sergei Roldugin is a friend of the Russian President and was recently linked in the scandal over the leaked Panama Papers. He is the head of an offshore empire that controls some $2bn and has been fiercely defended by Mr Putin.
Incidentally, the Palmyra concert was not the first one conducted by Mr Gergiev - he has conducted similar programs in the areas where the Russian military has carried out military operations. For example - in 2008, he conducted a concert in Tskhinvali, the main city in the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia that was heavily damaged in the Russian-Georgian war that year.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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