Russia bids farewell to slain Turkey envoy
MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin on Thursday bade farewell to Andrei Karlov at a packed memorial ceremony in Moscow for the diplomat who was assassinated in Turkey by an off-duty policeman.
Dozens of colleagues and relatives attended the ceremony for Karlov, the ambassador to Turkey whose death was labelled by Moscow as an act of terror while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the perpetrator was a member of Fethullah Gulen’s group behind the aborted July coup.
Putin laid red roses at the foot of Karlov’s coffin and spoke with his relatives but left the ceremony without making a statement. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praised the deceased envoy, who was 62, and paid his respects to his mother Maria, widow Marina and son Gennady, also a diplomat, as the ambassador’s body lay in state in a flower-decked coffin.
“We are saying goodbye to our friend Andrei Karlov who became a victim of a malicious, vile terrorist attack while in the line of duty,” Lavrov said at the ceremony held in the foreign ministry headquarters.
“We will never forget Andrei.” A religious service was later expected to be held at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour led by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill before the ambassador is laid to rest at a cemetery.russia has bestowed a prestigious Hero of Russia honour on Karlov posthumously, while his alma mater MGIMO Institute of International Relations has initiated a scholarship in his name. Karlov studied Korean and Japanese as he trained for his diplomatic career and worked for many years in North Korea.