Given the growing rift between the presidents of Russia and the United States, Russian protocol officials have found a way to put a good distance between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit, now proceeding in St. Petersburg. According to this news item from Russia’s Izvestia, rather than using Russian, the language of the host country, for the seating arrangements, English was used instead. So rather seated on either side of Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, the pair will be separated by not only the Saudi king, but the leaders of South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Problem solved!
The Izvestia news item, which will prove a treat for the protocol-obsessed, starts out this way:
Due to deteriorating relations between Russia and the United States over the Syrian issue and the scandal involving U.S. intelligence informant Edward Snowden, the St. Petersburg “Big 20” Summit organizing committee has seated Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama on opposite sides of the table.
G20 organizers told Izvestia that from the outset, they had originally been looking at two seating arrangements for the heads of state: one that corresponded to the English alphabet, and one following the Russian. Normally, the matter is decided according to the alphabet of the country organizing the summit. Thus, if there had been “Russian seating,” Putin and Obama would have been sitting practically next to one another – separated only by Saudi Arabia King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, who also supports military operations against the Assad regime by the U.S. and its allies. So in the end, organizers settled on “English seating.” This way, the Russian and U.S. leaders were separated by five heads of state: Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
“Seating at the G20 will be according to the English alphabet,” Russian press secretary Dmitri Peskov confirmed to Izvestia.
The seating of state leaders in alphabetical order is traditional for such events. Vladimir Shevchenko, head of protocol for both USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, says seating arrangements may change from one forum to the next because country names are spelled differently in different languages. For instance, “Germany” is written “????????” (Germania) in Russian, and “Allemagne” in French.
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