Love him for cleaning up the city centre, or loathe him for gentrification, Zoran Janković, the former head of Mercator and Mayor of Ljubljana from 2006 to 2011, and again from 2012 to the present, continues to make his mark on the city, and here he is receiving an award for his efforts from President Putin.
Sorry, that’s fake news. The real story, as relayed on the city’s website, is that Mayor Janković was in the Kremlin on Saturday November 4 to receive the Order of Friendship. The medal was given for Janković’s work in helping to improve relations between the two countries. Such efforts include keeping alive the memory of the Soviet soldiers who died in Slovenia during the two world wars, as marked by, among other monuments, the Russian Chapel on the Vršič pass, which was visited by President Putin in 2016 to mark the 100th anniversary of its construction.
