One of the Kyrgyz businessmen has erected a statue of Russian President Vladimir Putin at his ski resort in Kyrgyzstan, claiming that he return the favor to Russia, which had given him one of its financial institutions a loan he had previously requested from one of the Kyrgyz banks but abandoned it because of its unfair terms.
Resort director Akbar Rosyev said that he resorted to Kyrgyz banks but the bank’s terms did not meet his desire, while he received a loan of $ 1.2 million from the Russian Kyrgyz Development Fund, with an interest rate of 4%, a Russian-sponsored fund that opened in 2014.
Last month, Rosyev unveiled Putin's statue in the resort, which is 2.5 meters high, and the Russian leader appears in the statue wearing a suit, directing his gaze towards a barren landscape of rocky valleys and snow-capped peaks, in this place 30 kilometers south of the capital Bishkek.
"I have not found a way to express my gratitude to Russia and its leader, Putin," he said, but to erect a statue of him, adding that he considered Putin as a role model, saying that he thanks him for lending his banks this amount, and that his resort is now in better shape. "What can I say? Putin is a man, not all men," he concluded.
The fund, which supported the Rosyev project, describes itself as a pioneering mechanism for the integration of Kyrgyzstan into the Eurasian Union, a foreign policy initiative promoted by Putin since 2011 that aims to remove barriers to trade, capital, and labor movement between Russia and its former Soviet republics.
This statue joins other memorials erected by the resort for other leaders, among them the former Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin. Rosyev says that tourists regularly take pictures of these statues, and also take selfies with them.