(Moscow) Oval or rectangular, a very long table stands between Vladimir Putin and his interlocutors, a health precaution which reinforces the impression of a Russian president cut off from the world in the midst of the Ukrainian crisis and fuels mockery online.
Posted at 8:43 a.m.
During a meeting on Tuesday in the Kremlin, Mr Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz appeared seated on either side of a meters-long white table now familiar to Russia-watchers.
The scene had already occurred last week with French President Emmanuel Macron, the Kremlin explaining that this health precaution was taken for any foreign guest who refused an anti-COVID-19 screening by a Russian doctor.
These scenes, unusual for meetings at such a high level, illustrate the extent of the precautions taken to protect the 69-year-old Russian head of state from contamination in the midst of a new coronavirus pandemic.
But they are also seen as the symptom of an increasingly distant and isolated leader, whose intentions concerning the Ukrainian crisis remain indecipherable.
On Monday, Mr. Putin even imposed this distance on the head of diplomacy Sergei Lavrov and on Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, one of his friends with whom he regularly spent vacations.
They were forced to sit several meters away from him during a meeting devoted to Ukraine.
“Loneliness”
Seeing these photos, “it is obvious that he (Mr. Putin) is more and more alone,” said independent political scientist Konstantin Kalachev. “This loneliness is obvious: he no longer cares what other people think of him,” he adds.
Asked about the subject, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed on Tuesday that these measures were only “provisional” and linked to the “peak of the wave” of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, very contagious and often asymptomatic.
“There is nothing terrible or extraordinary there. We are going through times that make it necessary to take somewhat special measures, ”he relativized.
In fact, the Russian president has been surrounded for months by a health bubble that seems much tighter than that put in place for most other leaders in the world.
And this while in Russia, it has not imposed any confinement since that of spring 2020, in the name of preserving the economy, so that the balance sheet of the epidemic is approaching 700,000 dead in this country, according to Rosstat statistics agency.
By contrast, members of foreign delegations and journalists wishing to travel to the Kremlin must, for example, undergo three PCR tests in the four preceding days.
And visiting leaders who want physical proximity to Mr. Putin must agree to a Kremlin doctor sticking a swab in their nose. Or else settle for a chair at the end of the table.
mockery
These scenes sparked an avalanche of humorous comments on social networks, far from the tensions around Ukraine, a crisis which has awakened the specter of a new war in Europe.
Indeed, Russia, which has massed more than 100,000 soldiers on the borders of Ukraine, is accused of considering an invasion of its pro-Western neighbor, which Moscow denies.
While the Russian president cultivates the image of a strong man, the “internet memes” showing him on the back of a bear have now given way to those suggesting that the Swedish giant IKEA create a long table model called “Putin” or those imagining the Kremlin table as a tennis court or an ice rink.
With these photos, Vladimir Putin “risks looking ridiculous”, notes political scientist Konstantin Kalachev.
Even Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, a European ally of Mr. Putin who received him in the Kremlin in early February, “joked that he had never seen such a long table”, he adds.
On the other hand, jokes Mr. Kalachev, these photos “should relieve everyone (because) it is unlikely that a person paying so much attention to his health would trigger World War III”.