After an initial period of cooling of relations between the two countries, the thaw began soon after, leading to a flurry of diplomatic activities and exchange of visits by Russian and Cuban leaders. As a result, the cooperation between Russia and Cuba in economic and cultural fields have perceptibly improved.

One concrete proof: Only recently, Moscow organised an event at the club Reporter, which was but another way of further improving relations between Russia and Cuba. A large crowd of eminent celebrities and journalists collected at the opening of Moscow's Castro International Cigar Club.

Emitting clouds of smoke and sipping cocktails, the honoured guests spoke of theirpersonal cigar choices. But all agreed on one thing that Cuban cigars are unique in the world, that they have a special quality that can't be duplicated by producers anywhere else.

The inauguration of the Castro Cigar Club, coincided with the 30th anniversary of Cohiba, the most famous sort of Havana cigars. Cohiba was created and ostensibly produced for Castro, by another legendary revolutionary and comrade-in-arms of Castro, Che Guevara.

Last month, the Cuban Government reportedly lifted the ban from the export of Cohiba in favour of earning the country the much-needed foreign exchange.Traditionally, cigars have been considered a luxury product in Russia, strongly associated with social and intellectual prestige.

``The tradition of cigar smoking is not yet very strong in Russia,'' said famous film actor Anatoly Kuznetsov. ``When I smoke this wonderful cigar, I think of myself as an aristocrat, a gentleman from some Sherlock Holmes movie.''

But today, with the market reforms, the number of cigarsmokers are steadily increasing in Russia, and so is the demand and appreciation of the cigar aroma. And this is happening despite the flooding of Russian market by leading Western tobacco companies.

According to WHO statistics, Russia is the world's fourth largest tobacco market and about two-thirds of its men and a third of its women smoke.

Foreign cigarettes account for about 40 per cent of a market where 220 billion cigarettes were smoked in 1997.

Addressing the gathering, Oleg Nazarov, director of the Independent Association of the Russian Newsmakers, unifying Russian cigar smokers, called cigar a ``unique invention in the tobacco world''.

Sitting amidst the cigar smoke most of them talked and discussed the virtues of Castro's weakness. And probably in the haze imagined themselves among the more famous cigar smokers of the world such as Winston Churchill, Sir Conan Doyle, Somerset Maugham, Steven Speilberg, Sharon Stone and, of course, Castro.