Gifts from Russian President Vladimir Putin and the ousted Afghan leader are among the most famous that President Joe Biden has received from foreign leaders in 2021, notes from the State Department’s protocol office.
Documents detailing the gifts were released Thursday, while the two leaders’ relationship with Biden is in a different place than when the gifts were given.
Putin presented Biden with a $12,000 lacquer writing case and pen at a summit in Geneva, Switzerland, in June 2021, the first direct meeting between the two leaders since Biden took office in January of that year. The focus of the conversation was limiting nuclear weapons. Less than a year later, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine heightened tensions between the two leaders.
Also in June 2021, the president of Afghanistan, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, and his wife presented the president and first lady Jill Biden with two silk rugs, one worth $9,600 and the other $19,200. Ghani is hoping to reaffirm ties with the US after Biden announced the full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan amid the Taliban’s rise to power.
“The US and Afghan leaders firmly agreed that even after US forces leave Afghanistan, our strong bilateral partnership will continue,” he said. read a statement released by the White House after Biden met with Ghani on June 25.
In June 2021, Abdullah Abdullahwho at the time was in charge of the Afghan peace council and considered one of the most powerful leaders besides Ghani, presented Biden with a brass and lapis lazuli jewelry box, estimated to be worth $1,150.
Just two months later, on August 15, Ghani’s government collapsed when he fled the country and the Taliban took control of Kabul.
According to the State Department chief of protocol’s annual report, Biden received more than $46,000 in gifts from foreign leaders during his first year in office, Bloomberg reported. Twenty-two gifts were worth more than $100, the report said.
At The National Archives are now there all gifts from Putin and Ghani, as is required for any gift to a US official worth more than $415 – although he can keep the gift if he pays the price. Biden chose to keep a $2,200 photo of Queen Elizabeth II presented to him at the Group of Seven summit in southeast England, according to CBS.
Apart his gifts are recorded including a $2,700 Biden sand painting artwork, presented by Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc; a pen drawing of Biden’s tiny house of German Chancellor Angela Merkel valued at $780; and a jewelry box valued at $2,400 each for Biden and the first lady by King Abdullah and Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan.