The celebrity dog of the President of Moldova
Moldovan President Maia Sandu’s dog Codruț, who regularly appears on her Instagram account, is something of an online celebrity in the Republic of Moldova.
Codruț’s big moment came when he bit the hand of Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen during his visit to Chișinău in November, but this seems to have averted any major diplomatic consequences.
Sandu adopted Codruț, a former stray, in 2023 after he was hit by a car and lost a leg.
The Czech President with his cat
Czech President Petr Pavel and his cat Micka, a typical Czech cat name, were often seen together during the presidential election campaign.
“The election campaign is in full swing, time to bring out the heaviest caliber… Micka!” the incumbent president wrote on X about a month before the election.
The former NATO commander’s candidacy was a resounding success. Pavel received 58 percent of the vote. POLITICO could neither confirm nor deny whether Micka played a decisive role.
After the election, Micka lived with the presidential couple in Prague Castle and officially became the first presidential cat.
Special mention: Pets with totalitarian owners
Not all pet PR work is the same.
Russian President Vladimir Putin likes to use a variety of animals for his propaganda: for example, he frightened the then German Chancellor Angela Merkel with his hunting dog or allegedly saved a television crew from a Siberian tiger.
He is also said to have once wrestled a bear with his bare hands, but later reports showed that he was actually saved from being eaten by the grizzly bear by his former bodyguard.
Putin is not the only dictator preoccupied with mythical mastery of the animal kingdom. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has released several propaganda videos of himself riding white horses, one of which, according to state media, shows him climbing the country’s highest mountain at 2,750 meters.
However, Kim’s subsequent purge of Pyongyang’s dog population shows that he still has some work to do in refining his dog policies.
