The President of Russia Vladimir Putin shortly before midnight on January 7, arrived in the Novgorod region where to spend Christmas, reports TASS .
The Head of State went to the Church of St. Nicholas on the Lipno Island. There he will take part in the Christmas service. The temple is located on the eastern shore of Lake Ilmen, 8 kilometers south of Veliky Novgorod.
Vladimir Putin visited the Church of St. Nicholas on Lipne – an Orthodox church of the late 13th century and a monument of Novgorod architecture – in September 2016 with the then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev . At that time, the temple had only empty walls, but after the arrival of the country’s top officials, active restoration work began there, the progress of which Medvedev subsequently checked personally.
In December, the Kremlin announced Putin’s traditional trip to one of Russia’s regions for Christmas, without specifying where exactly the head of state would go. Later, the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov reported that the Kremlin will promptly inform about the plans of President Vladimir Putin for Christmas.