After all: no one could pull the other one off, at least not without taking a little walk. When Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron sat down in the Kremlin on Tuesday, not only was the Ukraine crisis in the room – but also a strangely expansive table, which was apparently intended to keep guest and host at a distance.
The choice of the piece of furniture was commented on online with the usual smugness – some wanted to hand the heads of government a tin telephone so that their spoken word reached the addressee at all. The differences that need to be bridged between Russia and the West could not have been better illustrated by the long table. However, there are also counter-examples, so the “round table” can look back on a long tradition.