What happened in talks between Presidents Obama and Putin at the G20 Summit in Mexico? According to this account from correspondent Viktoriya Prihodko of Russia’s Moskovskij Komsomolets, very little new transpired, except that Obama was outmatched by a ‘fresh-looking’ Putin, whose drawn-out meeting with an ‘exhausted looking’ Obama, delayed the Russian leader from receiving the British prime minister, who he made football jokes with, and Japan’s prime minister, who brought him a Judo kimono.
For Moskovskij Komsomolets, Viktoriya Prihodko starts out this way:
Los Cabos, Mexico: After two hours of discussion in Mexico with Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama looked exhausted. It was as if he were the one who had plunged into work after a 15-hour flight to a time zone 10-hours different than home. Putin, by contrast, was smiling and looked refreshed. The mood between the two presidents clearly testified to which of the two got the upper hand in the talks.
The meeting was held in a banquet hall: the Pacific Ocean lapped the shore no more than 30 feet away, and the entirety of the Hotel Esperanza (Hope), which housed the American delegation, was filled with the aroma of freshly-caught fish being cooked on the grill. Nevertheless, the two leaders confined themselves to coffee. Even in terms of their appearance, the presidents made no concessions to the resort atmosphere at Los Cabos, where they were attending the G20 summit: both kept their jackets on and their ties knotted. Yet not more than a month ago, Obama spoke on a bench at Camp David with Dmitri Medvedev with a jacket or tie.
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