Izvestia: "Kyrgyzstan to name mountain in Putin’s honour"
The Parliament of Kyrgyzstan is considering a legal motion to rename a 4,446-metre Tien Shan peak after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. However, the relevant legislation needs to be amended in order to make it a reality.
The government of Kyrgyzstan has drafted a bill on renaming the above-mentioned peak, located in the Kyrgyz Range in the basin of the Ak-Suu River, after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and submitted it to the unicameral parliament for consideration. Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev signed the document in late 2010. The motion was also approved by the authorities of the Chuya Region's Moscow District, where the mountain is located.
Although the parliament's national development committee examined the bill on January 11, it will take some time to approve it. Bakhtiyar Fattakhov, director of the National Agency for Local Government Affairs, explained that current national legislation made it impossible to name geographic objects after living persons. "It is therefore necessary to amend our legislation accordingly. We will be able to re-examine the issue only after that," he said.
The 7,439-metre Victory Peak, the highest point in Kyrgyzstan, is located on the Chinese border. It is followed by the 7,134-metre Lenin Peak, which borders on Tajikistan where it is known as Abu Ali Ibn Sina (Avicenna) Peak. Kyrgyzstan named another mountain peak after Boris Yeltsin, the first Russian president. The 5,168-metre peak was formerly called Oguz-Bashi.
They now propose naming a rather high mountain after Vladimir Putin, while even higher peaks are named after Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Lenin. Several years ago, Victory Avenue in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, was renamed Putin Avenue. At the time, Putin's press-secretary Dmitry Peskov said that while the prime minister opposed such initiatives, he could not ban them.
Vasily Voropayev
