Why did the Russian bother to go here?

Russia
Europe has the world's smallest countries and the world's biggest tragedies

Peter Kadhammar

This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.

Updated 11.11 | Published 07.16

San Marino has only 34,000 inhabitants. Photo: Peter Kadhammar

SAN MARINO. Why did Sergei, foreign minister of the world's largest country, go to small San Marino?

This little nation should be accommodated on a patch of land in northern Öland, it is so small, and yet Russia's foreign minister made the mistake of traveling here.

Europe is the continent of small countries and great tragedies. San Marino is located on a cliff surrounded by Italy and overlooking the Adriatic Sea. An almost invisible country known for its stamps, a bizarre number of gun shops and an insignificant defense force dressed in operetta uniforms. As well as two museums on the craft of torture.

The weapons are 40 percent cheaper than in Italy. Where the interest in the details and tools of torture comes from, I don't know.

Of the world's ten smallest countries, five are European. The very smallness creates soil for global intrigues, inflows of capital that do not want to be seen and importance far beyond what the countries' size justifies: Vatican City with 825 inhabitants is the center of 1.3 billion Catholics; Monaco with 37,550 inhabitants is the center of the old world rich; Malta, with a population of 460,000, once served as a bastion against the Muslim world; the Principality of Liechtenstein with 40,000 inhabitants sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland; San Marino with 34,000 inhabitants.

Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister. Photo: Rune Stoltz Bertinussen / NTB

Thousands and Thousands of tourists crowd the alleys and narrow streets of the old town. Two Russian women in green dresses take a selfie next to a green Renault that looks wrongly parked.

Cobblestones. Stone house. Either you strive upwards or downwards, rarely on level ground.

We go into the Grand Hotel San Marino for lunch only because the name brings to mind Wes Anderson's wonderful film Grand Budapest Hotel. But San Marino's is 1970s style with a dark lobby, dark brown leather armchairs, dark marble floors and a large dining room where a lonely couple who stopped talking to each other are sitting a long time ago.

In one of the squares stands a statue of a crying boy. It is a monument to the terrorist act in Beslan in Russian North Ossetia in 2004. A statue of solidarity with Russia.

San Marino is not in the EU. Sergei Lavrov traveled here in March 2019. He expressed his deepest respect and wanted to strengthen cooperation between the countries, grateful that San Marino did not stand up to EU sanctions when the Russian war against Ukraine began in 2014.

Russia is 280,000 times larger than San Marino.

If you leave the most important tourist routes, the city dies. Quiet alleys where the stones sweat.

At the university there is a bust of the Soviet cosmonaut Gagarin. Nobody understands what Gagarin has to do with San Marino, but Sergey Lavrov is happy.

Bust of the Soviet cosmonaut Gagarin. Photo: Peter Kadhammar

"The small republic of San Marino is alarmingly friendly towards Russia", was the headline of the British magazine Economist this spring.

In February 2022, San Marino appointed the French businessman Emmanuel Goût as ambassador "with special missions", it is not clear who. Goût has long had close connections with the Putin regime.

San Marino is Russia's back door to Europe, an Italian intelligence source told the Economist. A haven where spies can meet and discreet financial transactions can be carried out.

During World War I, in January 1915, Germany accused San Marino of facilitating espionage with its radio station. In June of the same year, San Marino joined the war on the side of Italy.

Fascists have ruled on this rock, and it is the only place in the world where Communists gained and relinquished power in peaceful elections.

Europe is the earth's most exotic continent where tragedies and comedies dance together. Like in Wes Anderson's film Grand Hotel Budapest.

We drink cold, local wine and look out over pointed mountains in the soft haze of dusk. The next morning I go to the house that houses both parliament and government and photograph the guards and their tasseled caps, sabers and green-and-red uniforms.

Guards outside San Marino's parliament and government. Photo: Peter Kadhammar