He made a name for himself during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Moscow, and now also during Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit: Vladimir Putin’s endless table. The white, decorated, six-meter-long board of the Russian head of state once again distracted from the serious content of the talks about the Ukraine crisis on Tuesday.
The reason for the (not only spatially) distant positions: the Kremlin’s Corona protocol. Even after Macron’s visit, countless memes and jokes about the table were circulating on the Internet, and there was speculation in political circles about the symbolic meaning of the great distance between the discussion partners. The Kremlin finally took a position – quite piqued: “That has to do with the fact that some follow their own rules and don’t work with the host side,” said Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Macron refused to follow the Corona protocol.
The physical distance is not to be understood visually
Putin, who maintains extremely extreme measures to protect against the corona virus, has also allowed some foreign heads of state and government to get closer to him in recent weeks. However, they had apparently agreed to a Russian PCR test. Macron refused. Nevertheless, Moscow emphasized that the procedure had no political reason. The physical distance “does not affect the negotiations in any way”.
Nevertheless, it was eagerly awaited how Scholz would fare in Moscow. Government circles said cautiously that Scholz had had himself tested for Corona by a doctor from the German embassy when he arrived at the airport in Moscow. As the “Bild” reported, the Chancellery had offered the Russian side to have the PCR test supervised by a Russian doctor.
Apparently that wasn’t enough to change the seating arrangement: Scholz also sat six meters away from Putin at the opposite end of the famous endless table.