The Year of Russian

The Year of the Russian Language was launched in Malta on the Orthodox Christmas Eve, from ITAR-TASS:

..The ceremony took place at the Russian chapel of the San Anton Presidential Palace in La Valletta, head of the Russian science and culture center in Malta Sergei Medvedev said. Maltese President Edward Fenech Adami congratulated Orthodox believers on Christmas and affirmed a big interest of Malta in the Russian culture and present day. He explained the interest with Christian values shared by both nations. Russian Ambassador to Malta Andrei Granovsky stressed the role of the Russian language in the spread of Christianity and inter-ethnic communication in Eurasia.

The choice of the Russian chapel was not accidental, as Maria Alexandrovna, daughter of Russian Emperor Alexander II, and her husband, Duke of Edinburgh and son of British Queen Victoria, lived in the San Anton Palace in the middle of the 19th century. Dowager Empress of Russia Maria Feodorovna, mother of Russia’s last tsar Nicholas II, visited the chapel for praying in 1919. Former Maltese Presidents Ugo Mifsud Bonnici and Guido de Marco, about 200 guests, representatives of the Russian community and local public attended the ceremony.

The Russian Centre for Science and Culture was set up in Malta in 1990