Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s joke to Vladimir Putin about the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin went viral on social media.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard that Russia is having these negotiations to unify time zones because they have a nine-hour difference between one side of the country and the other,” the Albanian prime minister joked at the Bled Strategic Forum in Slovenia. where hundreds of people were present, including the prime ministers of Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

“And the prime minister [rus Mihail Mișustin] approached Putin and said: “Mr. President, we have a problem. I sent my family on vacation and called them to say good night. And there it is already morning, they are on the beach. I called Olaf Scholz to wish him a happy birthday and he told me it was yesterday. I called Xi Jinping on New Year’s Day and he said it’s still an old year.” And Putin replied: “Yes, it happened to me too. I called Prigozhin’s family to tell them I was sorry for their loss, but the plane hadn’t taken off yet,” joked Edi Rama.

Albania condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine immediately after it began last year and is generally considered the most pro-European and pro-NATO country in the Balkans. In 2009, Albania was officially admitted to the North Atlantic Alliance, and also submitted an official application to join the European Union.

It gained candidate country status in 2014, a year after Edi Rama became the country’s prime minister.

The Embassy of Russia in Albania operates from “Vilna Ukraina” street.

On March 6 of last year, the mayor of the Albanian capital of Tirana, Erion Velyai, announced that the street on which the embassies of Russia and Ukraine are located will be renamed “Free Ukraine” in honor of the resistance of Ukrainians to the Russians.

“Our generation will be marked by this bloody aggression of Russia, and the heroic resistance of Ukraine must be remembered in our public places,” he said then.

“Russians will have to work, live and receive letters at the address on Vilnaya Ukrainy Street,” the Albanian official emphasized.

The death of Yevhen Prigozhin in a plane crash on August 23 caused numerous speculations that it was organized by the head of the Kremlin. Even US President Joe Biden made insinuations about this.

The Kremlin rejected as “absolute lies” any statements about the Russian president’s involvement in the death of mercenary Wagner. However, the Kremlin made it clear that it would not agree to an international aviation investigation into the causes of the crash.

The plane, which was carrying Prigozhin and the senior command of the Wagner group, crashed in the Tver region of Russia exactly two months after it provoked the rebellion of the “Wagnerians” against the military command in Moscow.