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Russia’s Circassian beauty queen set for Syria’s peacekeeping missions

MAIKOP, January 10, 22:18 /ITAR-TASS/. Bella Kukan, AdygeI’s winner of the first festival pageant Miss Circassia has a firm intention to participate in peacekeeping missions in Syria. She told Itar-Tass about it on Friday.

The 24-year-old beauty has sent an official letter to the Syrian embassy in Moscow, in which she offered her assistance in solving legal and visa issuance problems. The young woman also expressed her readiness to take part in the Russian Emergency Ministry’s humanitarian flights to the much-troubled Arab country, which has been torn torn by the civil war for almost three years already.

She also expressed her willingness to act as an interpreter because she has a good command of several foreign languages.

“As I work in Moscow, I want to use any opportunity to provide assistance to my compatriots in Syria,” she said.

Kukan works as a chief accountant in Moscow’s advertising company after graduating from St. Petersburg University.

Last autumn, 22 young women aged from 17 to 25 years contested for the title of the most beautiful young woman among Circassians. Claimants to the crown of Miss Circassia came from Russia’s constituent republics of Adygei,Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia as well as from Syria, Germany and Saudi Arabia.

They contested in the language, history and culture of the Agyghe people as well as exhibited their talents in cookery, gold-embroidery sewing and dancing.

The Circassians or Adyghe people are a North Caucasian ethnic group native to historical Circassia who used to live in the North Caucasus region in the 19th century. Circassians mainly speak the Circassian language, a Northwest Caucasian language with numerous dialects, the primary ones being Adyghe (West Circassian) and Kabardian (East Circassian). There remain about 700,000 Circassians in historical Circassia that embraces the regions of of Adygei, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, and the southern part of the Krasnodar Territory.

Also, they live in a number of countries outside the former Soviet Union, for instance, in Turkey, Jordan and Israel.

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