{"id":177524,"date":"2018-08-19T00:33:50","date_gmt":"2018-08-19T04:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=177524"},"modified":"2018-08-19T00:33:50","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T04:33:50","slug":"putin-dances-austrian-wedding-talks-merkel-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/08\/19\/putin-dances-austrian-wedding-talks-merkel-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin dances at Austrian wedding; talks with Merkel on Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Peskov said Putin said \u201cquite a long toast in German in which he said he was thankful and happy that he got a chance to visit the hospitable Austria.\u201d (Photo<\/a>: Vladimir Putin\/Twitter<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BERLIN \u2014 Russian President Vladimir\u00a0Putin\u00a0made a flying visit to Austria to attend the wedding of the country’s foreign minister Saturday before heading to Berlin for talks with German Chancellor Angela\u00a0Merkel.<\/p>\n

Austrian authorities imposed tight security measures around the site of the ceremony near the southern border with Slovenia, where Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl married her partner Wolfgang Meilinger, a businessman. Kneissl, an independent, was nominated by the pro-Russia Austrian Freedom Party, whose leaders also attended the wedding.<\/p>\n

Photos showed\u00a0Putin\u00a0dancing with the bride, who was dressed in a traditional Austrian costume. According to Austrian public broadcaster ORF,\u00a0Putin\u00a0also brought a small Cossack men’s choir along to entertain about 100 guests at the wedding.<\/p>\n

Austrian lawmaker Joerg Leichtfried of the opposition Social Democratic Party criticized Kneissl’s decision to invite\u00a0Putin\u00a0to the wedding, saying it called into question Austria’s role as a neutral intermediary in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed rebels are battling government forces. Austria currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency.<\/p>\n

Putin\u00a0spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies that the Russian president spent about an hour at the wedding.\u00a0Putin\u00a0gave the newlyweds a cold press oil machine, a traditional Russian samovar and a landscape painting that \u201cdepicts the place where the groom hails from,\u201d according to Peskov.<\/p>\n

Peskov said\u00a0Putin\u00a0said \u201cquite a long toast in German in which he said he was thankful and happy that he got a chance to visit the hospitable Austria.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking hours later alongside\u00a0Merkel\u00a0before the two leaders held bilateral talks at the German government’s guesthouse in Meseberg, north of Berlin,\u00a0Putin\u00a0said they would discuss bilateral ties, economic co-operation and Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea.<\/p>\n

The United States and some European countries have criticized the pipeline, saying it could increase Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, harm Ukraine \u2014 currently a major gas transit country \u2014 and pose an environmental risk.<\/p>\n

Germany imported 53 billion cubic meters of Russian gas last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cNord Steam 2 is purely an economic project and it doesn’t close the door to shipping gas through Ukraine,\u201d\u00a0Putin\u00a0said. Transit fees for Russian gas are an important item contributing to the Ukrainian budget.<\/p>\n

With protesters audible Saturday outside the guesthouse in Meseberg,\u00a0Putin\u00a0also raised the issue of humanitarian aid and funding for international reconstruction in Syria.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s important to help those areas that the refugees can return to,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it’s in everyone’s interests, including Europe’s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Germany, which has taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing the war, has in the past insisted it wouldn’t contribute to the reconstruction of Syria before a political settlement to end the war has been reached.<\/p>\n

Merkel\u00a0said the talks would also touch on the possibility of establishing a United Nations mission to help bring about peace in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BERLIN \u2014 Russian President Vladimir\u00a0Putin\u00a0made a flying visit to Austria to attend the wedding of the country’s foreign minister Saturday …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":177525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-frank-jordans","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}