92-year-old Coalition of the Left (SYRIZA) MEP Manolis Glezos appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a personal letter. “I fully understand the reasons that prompted you to decide to impose an embargo on EU agricultural products. However, on behalf of the Greek people, who are going through times of extreme hardship, I appeal to your humane feelings to think over your decision toward Greek farmers.”

“Our people were the only ones who stood against the wishes of the EU Directorate. We stood against the partition of Yugoslavia, then the bombing of Serbia, the invasion in Iraq, the threats against Syria, and we paid for it dearly by becoming the guinea pigs of the new order, along with Cyprus,” he says before pleading for Russia to lift the embargo on Greek agricultural products for the sake of the “traditional friendship” between the two countries.

Mr. Glezos, a national hero of the Greek resistance against Nazi Germany during World War II, had been arrested and tried in the late Fifties by an Athens military court for spying in favor of the Soviet Union. The case against him was dropped but the Soviet Union’s postal service had produced a special stamp with his face on it.

Mr. Glezos addresses Mr. Putin as a “comrade” and asks him to lift “For the ideals we fought for in the Second World War, for the ideals we fight for now, for the self-determination of the peoples, for the defence of human ideals, the Greek agricultural products should be excluded from the embargo.”