In May this year the European Parliament voted to condemn the authorities in Mari-El.
ECONOMIST: The Finno-Ugrics
2.
The president of Mari-El, a bombastic Kremlin loyalist, Leonid Markelov, was confronted, seemingly for the first time, with the fact that some outsiders including ambassadors and politicians from the Finno-Ugric countries, plus a bunch of academics found his rural subjects' odd customs and strange speech rather interesting.
ECONOMIST: The Finno-Ugrics
3.
He appointed Mari Carmen Aponte as ambassador to El Salvador.
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