The offer of eight rings to the former leaders of the USSR allied to Moscow, by the Russian president, gave rise to various interpretations, from Vladimir Putin’s intentions to references to the work “The Lord of the Rings”.
On the sidelines of a summit in St. Petersburg of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Kremlin presented its allies on Tuesday nine gold rings with the inscription “Happy New Year 2023” and the emblem of the CIS.
A ring was presented to the eight foreign heads of state present (Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan), as well as to Vladimir Putin.
Soon analysts and commentators began to draw a parallel with JRR Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”, where the master of evil, Sauron, offers nine rings to human rulers who later become his servants, the “Nazgûls”. “.
The only difference, in the book, is that Sauron secretly creates an additional ring, the Ring of Power, which allows him to control everyone else.
Critics of the Kremlin, especially in Ukraine, compare Vladimir Putin to Gollum, a figure corrupted by the ring of power, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Frodo, who decides to turn this ring into a burden to destroy it.
Putin got tired of being the 21st century Hitler and decided to play Lord of the Rings and become a “mighty Sauron”.
He presented the participants of the informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States with rings with the symbol of the “Commonwealth”. pic.twitter.com/vqZArg5uha
– Oleksiy Goncharenko (@GoncharenkoUa) December 27, 2022
Since the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine, the Ukrainian government has regularly compared Russia to “Mordor”, Sauron’s kingdom, and Russian soldiers to “orcs”, Sauron’s soldiers.
Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann believes that these nine rings are a visibly “conscious” “joke” of the Kremlin.
Schulmann explained, through the Telegram social network, that the CIS emblem contained in these rings reminds the “Eye of Sauron”, portrayed in the film adaptation of Tolkien’s work.
On Russian radio station Kommersant FM, journalist Dmitri Drize noted that the idea of a “ring community” among the nine leaders “is not part of reality, given the current circumstances.”
In addition, important differences divide some of the heads of state present, in particular the leaders of Armenia, Nikol Pashinian, and of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev, with opposing views on the breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Dmitri Drize also noted that only Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, one of the few outspoken allies of Vladimir Putin in his offensive in Ukraine, was seen wearing the small ring on his finger.
On Tuesday night, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov sought to shorten the interpretations.
“It’s just a New Year’s souvenir, nothing special about it,” he stressed, adding that Vladimir Putin will not wear his gold ring.
Source: TSF
