Wreaths were deposited in front of the image of the Cuban leader, who dedicated his life to the service of the people, demonstrating an example of devotion to the fight for freedom and an independent path for Cuba, said the second secretary of the embassy of Cuba in Russia, Ana Lourdes González.

González noted that “the Commander-in-Chief was a sincere and trustworthy friend of Russia, he made an enormous personal contribution to the formation and development of Russian-Cuban relations based on friendship, solidarity, trust, respect and mutual sympathy between our peoples”.

The commemoration was presided over by the Cuban Deputy Prime Minister Ricardo Cabrisas, the president of the Russian Society of Friendship with Cuba, Alexei Lavrov, and the second head of the Latin American Department of the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Sofinsky.

For Lavrov, Fidel Castro was one of the great men of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, “who changed our planet for the better, demonstrated in deeds what the system of ideas means for the trust and development of the peoples.”

Mikhail Makaruk, General-Major of Aviation and first vice president of the Friendship Society emphasized that the Cuban leader constitutes an example of service to his homeland. “We knew very little about Cuba, but when the Revolution triumphed, the director of our military school said that this was a great victory for Latin America.”

According to Lena Loshkina, head of the Russian Committee for the elimination of the blockade on Cuba, many people in the world, not only in Russia, began to love Cuba by knowing Fidel Castro.

Sergei Batchikov, vice president of the Friendship Society, expressed the opinion that Fidel Castro is a man of humanity, who saw the future from so far that it seemed that he was traveling to the cosmos, saw the world, and returned to tell us how to act. “Fidel changed my life,” he concluded.

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