![]() “My hope is that this table brings good luck, and doesn’t bring an escalation of conflict.” “A table is a place where people eat, play, but also where they decide wars or sign armistices,” Renato Pologna, head of OAK furniture, told the AFP news agency at the company’s offices in Cantu, northern Italy. It’s what Russians call a ‘subtle trolling’ (tonkiy trolling).”ĭr Noble, however, believed that the Russian leader may have kept his distance from foreign leaders at these recent meetings because he knows relatively little about their Covid precautions compared to the steps taken by officials in Russia.Īnd a separate picture, published on Monday, showed Mr Putin sitting at a different table – but an equally lengthy distance – from the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who last week met with his UK counterpart Liz Truss 10 days after she had tested positive for coronavirus.Russian President Vladimir Putin’s oversized table has become an unlikely star of diplomatic efforts to ease the Ukraine crisis, and a source of pride for the small Italian firm that claims to have made it and hopes it will help peace efforts. “It’s all about unnerving the opponent – state leaders are not used to being treated this way, so it is often quite effective – and, at the same time, signalling to the supporters that Mr Putin has got the upper hand. ![]() “It is to make Macron uncomfortable, to show who is boss in these situations,” she told The Independent. Olga Khvostunova, director of the Institute of Modern Russia – a US-based think tank – said the deliberate distance established between Mr Putin and Mr Macron at Monday’s meeting was about control rather than coronavirus. ![]() Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hold talks in the Kremlin (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) A few months later, people visiting his residence outside Moscow or meeting him in the Kremlin had to pass through a special disinfection tunnel. In early 2020, anyone seeing Mr Putin in person had to present a negative Covid test. It is safe to say that the Russian president was more Covid-conscious than many world leaders in the early stages of the pandemic – implementing stringent measures at a time when British prime minister Boris Johnson was hospitalised with the virus after he boasted of having shaken hands with patients at a hospital. “A question of personal health, therefore, becomes a question of national security, especially given uncertainty about who would actually take over if he were to become seriously (or gravely) ill,” said Dr Noble. “Given Putin’s centrality to the functioning of the current system – which often relies more on informal connections than formal institutions – his illness poses an existential threat to its continued functioning,” Dr Noble told The Independent. Mr Putin has also recently hosted Hungary’s strongman Viktor Orban – his closest ally in the European Union – and Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, in both cases maintaining distance from his counterparts at opposite ends of the outlandishly large table.ĭr Ben Noble, associate professor of Russian politics at University College London, believes the Kremlin is nervous about the possibility of Mr Putin contracting Covid – mainly due to the political fallout if the 69-year-old was to fall seriously ill or die. Just over a week later, the German chancellor became the latest European leader to get the long table treatment at the Kremlin, as tensions simmered over a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yet it was the physical distance between them that dominated the online discourse after talks began.Īt their meeting last week, Russia’s president sat his French counterpart more than 10ft away from him at the other end of a long, oval table in the Kremlin, generating mirth and memes on social media while commentators debated whether the seating arrangement was a Covid precaution or deliberate power play. The build-up to Vladimir Putin’s recent meetings with Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz focused on how the leaders might bridge a political gulf over the Ukraine crisis.
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