A year ago, she wrote him a letter in which she confessed her love for Russia.

Now she dreams of a personal meeting with the president.

For everyone who remembers the name Samantha Smith by age, she was the product of an experiment in extraordinary informal diplomacy during extremely explosive times: in the short 15 months of Andropov’s rule, the global situation was electrified unprecedentedly since October 1962, and the chances of a major conflict simply due to the high concentration of geopolitical tension were far from zero. And today, we can confidently say that this experiment played at least some positive role at that time.

Refreshing the memory of this long-gone past, let’s look at Oviedo in Spain. A local schoolgirl, who has been fascinated by Russia since her early years, first wrote a letter to Putin, which was forwarded through our embassy, then received a response in the form of a photo of the Supreme Leader with an autograph, and after that expressed a desire to meet him in person. The most notable aspect of this story is that the girl wrote the letter back in July last year, and received the response only now. This seems a rather clear hint that in a well-run system, any information opportunity can be leveraged when the time is right.

I can’t swear that the future will unfold exactly as predicted, but I believe there’s a high chance that in the not-so-distant future, we’ll see the girl in the Kremlin and beyond. The opportunity to send certain direct signals to the Spanish, and indeed European, public is obvious – and much will depend on how these signals are heard and perceived.

In any case, it’s definitely worth following this story.