President Vladimir Putin turned 70 on Friday amid fawning congratulations from subordinates and a plea from Patriarch Kirill for all lay and clergy to pray for the health of the longest serving paramount leader of Russia since Josef Stalin.
Putin, who rose to the Kremlin’s top job on the last day of 1999, is facing the biggest challenge of his rule after the invasion of Ukraine triggered the gravest confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Hindustan Times reported.
On his birthday, Putin is due to attend an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States in St Petersburg, the former imperial capital founded by Peter the Great that is his hometown.
“We pray to you, our Lord God, for the head of the Russian State, Vladimir Vladimirovich, and ask you to give him your rich mercy and generosity, grant him health and longevity, and deliver him from all the resistances of visible and invisible enemies, confirm him in wisdom and spiritual strength, for all, Lord hear and have mercy,” Kirill said.
