Latvian singer Laima Vaikule spoke about her first meeting with Vladimir Putin, which took place before he became the leader of Russia. According to the artist, during a festive banquet at the Kremlin, the future president hardly took his eyes off Alla Pugacheva. Vaikule shared this in an interview with the program "And Then Graham Came." The singer recalled that she first saw Putin after a concert in the Kremlin, where a banquet was organized for the artists. At that time, he did not hold his current position in Russian politics, but his behavior left an impression on her. > “Then there was a banquet, but he wasn’t such an important figure back then. I just observed how he behaved and how he looked at Alla. Everyone pretended it didn’t concern them, but Alla was like the center of his attention. That’s what I noticed back then. I was just wandering around, I didn’t care. And that’s how I ended up wandering,” Vaikule said.  In the interview, the singer also recalled the first mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, with whom she was personally acquainted. She described him as a "remarkable person" and admitted that it pains her to hear attempts to tarnish his memory. According to Vaikule, it was after Vladimir Putin came to power that Russia definitively changed its political course. > “I liked Anatoly Sobchak from those early congresses. Back then, it was unimaginable. What he said and how he behaved. It makes me very sad when today they start to tarnish his reputation. He wasn’t the way they are trying to portray him now. He was a remarkable person. Gentle, wonderful. He could be deceived because he was trusting, also unprepared for human treachery,” the singer said. Laima Vaikule has repeatedly criticized the Russian authorities since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine. In her interviews, she regularly shares memories of representatives of the Russian political and cultural elite with whom she had the opportunity to communicate over the years.