What is it With Putin and The Long White Table?

ALBAWABA - What is it with Putin and his super-long tables? Is this becoming a new style of negotiations and chitchat the Russian leader prefers when meeting foreign leaders and dignitaries?

Well, yes. Russian president Vladimir Putin switched to using extraordinary long tables in a bid to follow the international Covid-19 protocol of social distancing - 1.5 meters by WHO or thereabouts.

The white table which Putin first used to meet French President Emmanuel Macron in an attempt to persuade Russia not to venture into the Ukraine, is at least about six meters - certainly long enough to deflect any deadly virus that may be infused from the other party.

The long-table long has long become the butt of all jokes, the seesaw - with leaders taking turns to swing on the seesaw table. The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz  used the same table to persuade Putin to be more flexible with Ukraine and stop his insistence about NATO. 

Remember these visits where done  before Russia's military intervention into the country. Well, the meetings practically did no good. But the long table continues to appear on the news and social with different views and amusing comments. 

One thing though with the "heavy white table" there are plenty of memes on just about anything and everything one can think of. Netizens go to town with this one calling Putin (69) "paranoid", "aloof" and a "loner". But make no doubt about and judging from his long decades in power Putin knows exactly what he is doing. 

Having said that it might be interesting to look at the way the Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky with his Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, are portraying themselves, hugging each other in a friendly way. Would Putin do that to Sergey Lavrov, his Foreign Minister? Not in a million years? Well, you might be surprised.