HE with the Chief Guest Hon Shakeel Mohamed

WATER EDGE GARDEN was the venue of the reception

HE Irada Zeynalova in company of Alif Members

Gift offered by Tanzilah to HE Irada Zeynalova

organised by Alif Society in honour of the Russian ambassador Irada Zeynalova in the presence of about 150 guests.
The menu was Briani.
After dinner, the President welcomed the guests during a speech and the Ambassador in her delivery thanked Alif and talked about the Russia-Mauritius relationship.

SPEECH IN HONOUR OF RUSSIAN AMBASSDOR IRADA ZEYNALOVA 5 DECEMBER 2024
Ladies and gentlemen,
Thank you very much for having responded so generously to our invitation this evening. Will you please all rise for the National Anthems rendered by Stephany, our Diva. Thank you.
It is good to see you all for this moment of sharing and fellowship. I am sure you have made new friends and there have been many exchanges of cards.
The business of tonight is to honour Ambassador Irada Zeynalova, from the country with onion-shaped church domes and of superlatives……..the biggest country in the world, housing the biggest and deepest fresh water lake, a country with 11 time zones, the first one to send a man Yuri Gargarin, a woman, Valentina Tereshkova and an animal, the dog Leika, in space, the first country to produce the Covid 19 vaccine, the land of Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Alexander, Pushkin, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Fyodor Dostoyevsky and other world famous novelists and poets, with architectural treasures like the Kremlin, and St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, without forgetting its ballet.
In this tumultuous world, Putin is mastering and driving geo-politics just as successfully as he has mastered the martial arts of judo. Before hosting the BRICS members in the most Muslim Russian city of Kazan, he got the SCO meeting held in Pakistan to endorse its Astana agreement with the aim of developing synergy between BRICS and Eurasian economic Union. With Russia’s access to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean through the Karakoram Pass and with the thaw in the North pole aiding to open new connectivity to the rest of the world, Eurasia will become a unified land and will signal the end of unipolarity, the scourge of present times.

Could one justifiably speculate about the prophecy of Geographer kinder becoming a reality, namely that the country controlling central Eurasia will control the world. It is not the third world that will lament at this outcome as Russia has always been the friend of the wretched of the earth, especially in its struggle to fight colonialism.
Ambassador, I wonder how many people realise the constructive role that your country is playing in drawing a totally new world architecture with its economic might. You are replaying Bandung and breathing a new life into the spirit of the non-aligned movement dreamt of by Tito, Nasser, Nehru and Sukarno. Russia, in alliance with 60% of the world’s population, 40% of global GDP and 22 % of world’s total land area represents a treasure trove.
It will be a new dawn which can enjoy indivisible security against the present national security which requires military bases dotting around the world. Indivisible security is in line with the UN charter. Irada, multipolarity is a must for this fractured world; it is the tool that would enforce rights, justice and co-operation.
We are travelling hopefully to reach the destination of this world of milk and honey with Putin at your steering wheel and with the aid of his all-weather friend XI Jinping, co-captain of ship Hope. Russia under Putin, has weathered and is weathering many storms. He tried to avoid the war in Ukraine, welcoming Turkey’s proposal of a peace formula; he invited Ukrainian heads for peace talks but alas was forced into a war which he has masterly turned into a war of attrition and bleeding Ukraine whose deranged leader cannot face reality. This reality is glaring into the eyes of those who have them to see. Do you need to be rocket scientist to understand that the country which has taught a lesson or two to Hitler and Napolean will make a mincemeat of a small fry. The Russian bear, equipped with the Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile that travels at mac 10-12 and can turn its target into gas cannot be coerced into humiliation again. No, not in a hundred years. This is the hard fact.
A new game changer may be the proximity of Putin with Donald Trump who has no secrets about his opinions. The Master chef must be able to talk Trump into leaving his elusive moral high ground and threatening to nuke all and sundry and to embrace a peaceful world.
Russia has a great future and a generous heart as well. You have already demonstrated it by offering your hydrocarbons at $30 a barrel when its going world price was $60 a barrel. If we can be assured of sufficient food and energy at affordable prices, we can sleep peacefully, far from the nightmares caused by dreamers of hegemony, those dreamers who cannot assure security in the Red Sea against the missiles of a rag tag primitive army. Irada, we are opening our arms, will you embrace us?
You are moving full throttle in your de-dolarization trail. Traveling hopefully is better than to arrive. But in this journey, one would legitimately ask you: aren’t you folks inspired by your great Tolstoy whose mantra is: “if you feel pain, you are alive, if you feel people’s pain, you are a human being”. We would like to assure you we are all human beings. And we would like to wish you well. In the meantime, we would like to wish you a happy and productive stay among us. As a token of our new friendship, we would request you to accept a small present from the hands of our secretary, Tanzilah.