Vladimir Putin sends Elton John a birthday message every year via WhatsApp
Russian President Vladimir Putin sends British rocker Elton John a birthday message every year via the WhatsApp messaging service, according to John’s husband David Furnish.
“Every March 25th, I get a WhatsApp message from the Russian health minister saying: ‘I just want to wish Elton happy birthday and we wish him all the best and love his music so much,'” Furnish told The Guardian. “So, it is this strange paradox.”
“There’s nothing in it for them to send me a WhatsApp on Elton’s birthday,” Furnish added. “They’ve done it a couple of birthdays in a row.”
Furnish also revealed that Putin had previously called John to apologise for a prank phone call John received from someone claiming to be Putin. “Putin himself was so appalled by this that he wanted to ring up personally to say ‘I’m sorry this happened’,” Furnish added.
“I remember the call coming in – the whole house froze. Vladimir Putin’s phoning the landline in your house. Perfect English,” Furnish said. “He just said: ‘I’m sorry that someone phoned you up and pretended to be me because you don’t deserve to be, you know, pranked or treated like that.'”
“‘And I hear you would like to sit down and meet and talk with me one day,'” Furnish quoted of Putin’s message. “‘I would welcome that, I would love to talk to you.'”
Back in 2019, John was outspoken against Putin’s claims that Russia has “no problem” with LGBTQ+ individuals. “I find duplicity in your comment that you want LGBT people to ‘be happy’ and that ‘we have no problem in that’,” John said at the time. “Yet Russian distributors chose to heavily censor my film Rocketman by removing all references to my finding true happiness through my 25-year relationship with David and the raising of my two beautiful sons.”
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