Why Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko gifted Vladimir Putin a tractor for his 70th birthday

One of the stranger birthdays presents for Vladimir Putin, who has been outcast by the West since his invasion of Ukraine, is a tractor.

It was given to him by Alexander Lukashenko, a friend from Belarus and owner of a tractor factory.

Lukashenko announced the news at a meeting in St. Petersburg, the hometown of the other strongman.

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While the conflict that his invasion sparked raged, Putin was hosting other ex-Soviet state heads of state.

Putin also dropped a hint this week that there would be issues after successful Ukrainian counterattacks, calling the atmosphere in the recently acquired territory “restive.”

But on Friday, his allies showered praise and presents on the man who has ruled Russia for more than 20 years, whether as president or prime minister.

The self-described “last dictator” of Europe, Lukashenko, who has been in charge longer than the Russian president and whose government is also subject to Western sanctions, arrived in St. Petersburg with a gift certificate for the Belarusian-built car.

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The Minsk Tractor Works is the nation’s premier manufacturing facility.

Putin’s reaction to the big-wheeled gift, which had to contend with mountains of melons and watermelons from Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon, was not immediately clear.

Putin has, however, been frequently spotted on tractors for a number of years.

The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, praised Putin for “transforming the image of Russia, strengthening its sovereignty and its defence capability, and protecting its national interests” along with the presents.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, referred to himself as “the number one patriot in the world.”

Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, who is also subject to international isolation, praised the chief of the Kremlin for “crushing the challenges and threats of the United States” from a distance.

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On the occasion of his birthday once more, Putin’s critics painted him as a war criminal attempting to wreck another nation while destroying his own.

Oleksii Reznikov, the defence minister of Ukraine, urged the Russian military to turn their back on Putin and refuse to participate in his war, claiming that Putin was “hiding in a bunker rather than standing” with his troops.

Social media users pointed out the irony of Lukashenko’s gift to Putin: as farmers were spotted hauling away abandoned military vehicles, the simple tractor quickly came to represent Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion.

Demonstrators in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, insulted the president of Russia with a huge dummy showing him as a naked monarch sitting on a gilded toilet.