This year will mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Russia and Singapore, but tomorrow will be the first time Russian President Vladimir Putin drops by our shores.
The last time a Russian head of state dropped by here was way back in 2009, when former president Dmitry Medvedev met with then Singapore president S.R. Nathan, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, and his cabinet.
President Putin’s visit will reaffirm Singapore’s “broad-based and long-standing friendship with Russia,” noted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and will be in conjunction with the 33rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and Related Summits. Tomorrow, he’ll be receiving a ceremonial welcome at the Istana, where he’ll be meeting President Halimah Yacob and PM Lee. The presidents will be co-officiating the groundbreaking ceremony of a new Russian Cultural Centre as well as an Orthodox church.
This week will also see President Putin holding bilateral meetings with foreign leaders while attending the 3rd ASEAN-Russian Summit on Wednesday and the 13th East Asia Summit on Thursday.
Singapore-Russia relations
Relations between both countries have remained as tight as ever, even in the light of investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in the United States. According to Russia’s ambassador to Singapore Andrey Tatarinov in an SCMP report, the Little Red Dot has been “singled out as an important partner” of Russia in the Asia-Pacific.
President Putin also increased Asia’s priority in Russian’s foreign policy, with Singapore benefiting from a quadrupling of trade with Russia over the last decade. During the Russian premier’s visit here, it’s expected that a free trade agreement between Singapore and the Eurasian Economic Union (comprising of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan) will move forward.
As great as the relations are, the website of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Singapore really could use an update from what looks like a GeoCities page created during our secondary school days.
