MOSCOW, December 31 (Itar-Tass) —— Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and other high-ranking officials, as well as most Russians, are going to see in New Year with their families.
“Vladimir Putin will celebrate the holiday at home, with his family,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Itar-Tass on Sunday.
The coming year 2013 will be special for the presidential family. On July 28 Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila will celebrate the 30th anniversary of their marriage. They have two daughters Maria, 27, and Yekaterina, 26. The president said recently at a big press conference that his children “are all right, they live in Moscow, they study and work, they are all right in their personal life and in terms of their professional growth.” “I am proud of them,” the president stated.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is proud of his son Ilya, who became a university student in 2012. “The prime minister will see in New Year in his family,” Medvedev’s spokesperson Natalya Timakova told Itar-Tass on Sunday. “Medvedev is going to spend the first days of the new year in Sochi, where he will go mountain skiing and will hold a meeting for the run-up to the Sochi Olympics.”
“If the weather is good, I will go mountain skiing. You know that place. In invite everybody for a meeting in Sochi, where it will be held on December 5 and we will discuss the Sochi Olympics,” Medvedev told reporters.
Ahead of the holidays the prime minister also wished to the Russians to have some rest and build up their strength. “I wish you to have a good rest, as the holidays are quite long, you should have patience and a good mood,” he noted.
Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich told Itar-Tass that he will see in New Year to the chime of the Kremlin bells “with my family and my friends according to the many-year tradition.” He also acknowledged that he “likes to give and receive the gifts,” but refused to reveal the secret, what he will put under the New Year tree for his relatives and friends.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin are going to celebrate the holiday in their families. Rogozin will go to the bath house with his friends in the afternoon on December 31. “Then four Rogozin generations will meet for the New Year party,” he said.
Presidential aide Yuri Trutnev will see in New Year in his native city of Perm. He is going to go sledding and make reels around the New Year tree. Meanwhile, Trutnev will have to solve a quite tricky problem. His nine-year-old daughter asked not for some concrete present, but happiness. “Children used to write the notes to the Father the Frost, and we will seek to bring his gifts to them. This time a nine-year-old daughter Masha puzzled me. She wrote that she wants only happiness,” Trutnev told Itar-Tass on Sunday. “Usually I can solve the problems, but I still do not know what to do with it,” he acknowledged.
Meanwhile, far from all state officials will spend all long New Year holidays. For instance, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who is in charge of the Sochi Olympics, will spend the New Year holidays in Sochi. Meanwhile, the power utilities and emergency services will be on standby.