Gollum or Sauron? Putin surprises by offering eight golden rings to allied leaders

It’s a small gift, but it’s talked about a lot. A “deliberate” reference to The Lord of the Rings, or just an innocent memory? Vladimir Putin on Tuesday gave the leaders of the former USSR, allies of Moscow, eight rings. A gift that provokes reactions and questions, as references to Tolkien’s work abound since the beginning of the terrorist attack in Ukraine.

Following the St. Petersburg summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an alliance of several former Soviet republics, the Kremlin on Tuesday presented nine gold rings with the words “Happy New Year 2023” and the NIK emblem. This ring was presented to the leaders of the eight foreign heads of state present: Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, as well as Vladimir Putin.

Comparison between Putin and Gollum

Commentators have immediately drawn a parallel to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, in which the evil lord Sauron offers the nine rings to human rulers, who then become his servants, the “Nazgûl”. The only difference is that in the book, Sauron secretly creates an additional ring, a unique ring that allows him to control all the others.

Kremlin critics, especially in Ukraine, have compared Vladimir Putin to Gollum, a figure corrupted by the Ring of Omnipotence, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Frodo, who decides to take the Ring of Omnipotence as a burden to destroy it.

Since the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine, the Ukrainian government has regularly compared Russia to “Mordor,” the realm of Sauron, and Russian soldiers to “orcs,” the soldiers of Sauron. On Telegram, Russian political scientist Yekaterina Shulmann believes that the nine rings are clearly a “conscious” Kremlin “joke.” She notes that the CIS emblem on said rings resembles the Eye of Sauron shape depicted in the Hollywood adaptation of the book.

The Kremlin evokes a simple “memory”

On Russia’s Kommersant FM radio, a less enthusiastic journalist, Dmitry Drize, notes that the idea of ​​a “ring community” between nine leaders “isn’t really our topic, given the current circumstances.”

Indeed, important divisions divide some of the heads of state present, in particular the leaders of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, and Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, who oppose the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Dmitry Drize notes that only Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, one of the few categorical allies of Vladimir Putin in his attack on Ukraine, was seen with a ring on his finger.

On Tuesday evening, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov wanted to break off the interpretation. “It’s just a New Year’s memory, there’s nothing special about it,” he said, adding that Vladimir Putin would not be wearing his gold ring.