Ian Blatchford, the director of the Science Museum, London, was personally pinned on Thursday 10 December by Russian President Vladimir Putin with the Medal of Pushkin, a state decoration bestowed for achievements in arts, culture and education. He was one of just a handful of foreigners, including the actress Consuelo de Haviland, who represents Russian Railways in France, recognised at the annual awards ceremony held in the Kremlin. Dozens of Russians received Medals, ranging from the cosmonaut Sergei Ryazansky, to the state television journalist Evgeni Poddubny, whose dramatic reports are credited for laying the groundwork for Russia’s intervention in Syria, to the opera baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
In his comments, Blatchford told Putin, in Russian, that it is “a great honour for me to get this medal in a country that I have come to love,” before switching to English to talk about the exhibition Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age at the Science Museum, London. The show “reminds the whole world of Russia’s leadership in space exploration and how it was made possible by brilliant engineers, cosmonauts and the imagination of the Russian people”.
Blatchford added that he was happy to receive the award just before British astronaut Tim Peake blasts off to the International Space Station from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 15 December. Blatchford ended his speech with what he said was his favorite Russian phrase: “Slava Gagarinu!” or “Glory to Gagarin!”