• Alexander Lukashenko, a friend of Vladimir Putin’s from Belarus, gave him a tractor for his 70th birthday.
• The Belarusian-made vehicle was given to him by Mr. Putin’s fellow strongman in St. Petersburg.
• North Korea’s Kim Jong-un praised the Russian president for “crushing the challenges of the U.S.”

As a pariah in the West since his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is getting some strange gifts for his 70th birthday. One of them is a tractor.

Alexander Lukashenko, a friend of his from Belarus, gave it to him. Belarus has a tractor factory.

Mr. Lukashenko confirmed the news when he went to St. Petersburg, the city where his fellow strongman lives, for talks.

While the war he started by invading Ukraine was going on, Mr. Putin was meeting with other leaders of ex-Soviet states.

Faced with successful counterattacks by the Ukrainians, he hinted at problems this week by calling the situation in the regions he recently took over “restive.”

But on Friday, his friends praised and gave gifts to the man who has led Russia for more than 20 years as president or prime minister.

Mr. Lukashenko, who calls himself Europe’s “last dictator” and has been in power even longer than the Russian leader (since 1994), came to St. Petersburg with a gift certificate for the Belarusian-made vehicle.

The Minsk Tractor Works is the most important factory in Belarus.

It wasn’t clear right away how Mr. Putin felt about the big-wheeled gift, which had to compete with mountains of melons and watermelons from Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon.

Along with the gifts, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, praised Mr. Putin for “changing the image of Russia, strengthening its sovereignty and defense capability, and protecting its national interests.”

Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, who is backed by Moscow, called him “the most patriotic person in the world.”

Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, praised the man in the Kremlin for “crushing the challenges and threats of the United States.” Kim Jong-un lives in a different country, but he faces the same kind of international isolation.

On Mr. Putin’s birthday, his enemies again tried to show him as a war criminal who wants to destroy another country while destroying his own.

Oleksii Reznikov, the Ukrainian Defense Minister, said that Vladimir Putin was “hiding in a bunker rather than standing” with his soldiers. He asked Russia’s military to reject him and refuse to fight in his war.

Demonstrators made fun of Russia’s president in Prague with a huge dummy of him as a naked emperor sitting on a golden toilet.

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