Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin continued a private two-day pilgrimage to the monastic community of Mount Athos on Friday.
The Russian prime minister is hosted at the St. Panteleimon Monastery, where monks of mostly Russian descent reside. He entered the Athonite community by boat after first arriving at Thessaloniki’s Macedonia airport, accompanied by a relatively small entourage and no press coverage.
In a related Russia development, the newly appointed ambassador of the Russian federation to the Lebanon, Alexei Roudakov, met in Moscow this week with the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, His Eminence Hilarion.
On his part, Hilarion, who is also the Moscow Patriarchate’s head of the department for external Church relations, briefed the diplomat over the Russian Orthodox Church’s cooperation with the Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East.
