Pablo S. Olmos Mexico City

Mexico City

Updated Tuesday, February 20, 2024-20:25

The Russian journalist Inna Afinogenova has held an exclusive interview with the Mexican president,

Andrés Manuel López Obrador

(AMLO), which is broadcast starting at 9 p.m. (Spanish peninsular time) on Canal Red.

The meeting has aroused much expectation on both sides of the Atlantic, since AMLO has given

very few interviews

since taking power in December 2017, claiming that he is already sufficiently accountable to public opinion in his daily press conferences, popularly known as 'Mornings'.

The interview given to Pablo Iglesias' channel

will be the fourth he has conducted in almost six years of mandate

and, probably, it will be one of the last, since he will leave power on October 31.

"You're going to leave me like a squeezed lemon

," says López Obrador, smiling in a preview of the interview he gave to Canal Red. In the promotional video, which lasts one minute and 13 seconds, a cordial tone is sensed between Afinogenova and the leader. Mexican, where they address various topics of interest such as

migration

,

relations with the US

or

the legacy he believes he will leave

after leaving power.

Among other questions, the Russian journalist asks AMLO: "What worries you today that didn't worry you when you became president? What would the AMLO of today say to the AMLO of 2006? What has been the most difficult decision? What have you had to take in these years?"

In one of the excerpts, the Mexican president confesses that what he values ​​most in his life is "honesty" and remembers how he experienced one of the most tense episodes of his mandate when Donald Trump threatened to close the border crossings if Mexico did not control the immigration, "they talked about closing the border and I laughed," he says.

With seven months left until his term ends, López Obrador has reasons to be optimistic: he has already managed to fulfill his main electoral promises and

his party's candidate is the favorite

to succeed him in office. However, his six-year term has also become

the most violent and polarized

in the country's history, issues about which we still do not know if he has been interrogated by Afinogenova.

The choice of Canal Red as the medium chosen to carry out one of his last interviews has surprised a lot in Mexico. Mainly because few know this media outlet founded by Pablo Iglesias, who visited López Obrador in his office in January 2023, and whose version for Latin America is directed by Afigenova,

former deputy director of Russia Today in Spanish

.

The relationship with the Kremlin has also caught the attention of the Mexican public, since López Obrador has maintained a fairly cordial relationship with Vladimir Putin's government, despite the war in Ukraine and its neighborhood with the United States.

The gestures with Russia have been multiple: from sending a peace plan to the UN that was rejected for being too close to Moscow, to including a delegation of Russian troops in the annual parade of the Mexican Army.