Yeah, that is an unfortunate point.
Do even his generals and his military ministers, these days, get into the same room as Putin while armed?
– where was that picture of the conference room, with Putin all alone at one side of a very large room, all the people he was consulting “with” on the other, and a caption that they were allowed up one at a time to stand near enough to give a report? I don’t remember which thread that was posted in.
Was it this one? Matches your description of the scene, but no caption as far as I could tell.
Here are some profiles of the characters most often seen with Putin.
There are few in uniform, but their military experience is questionable in the context of a large scale invasion of such a large country. They are largely old KGB buddies of Putin from his days in St Petersburg and East Germany. They are all spooks. It maybe explains why the Russian army is proving to be so bad the kind of combined operations at the scale required for this invasion. Afghanistan was a long, long time ago. However they know how to pulverise a city with artillery and air power like Grozny and Aleppo. Whether they will do this to Kiev is another matter. If it is the heart of the Russian identity, as Putin suggests, it makes no sense to destroy it.
There are so many. There are of course the ones demonstrating Putins love for looooong tables:
But even without long tables, Putin does not like to get too close to others:
No, a different picture – not Putin at one end of the table and everybody else at the other, but Putin on one side of the room, I think behind a table, and everybody else in chairs at the other side, not near his table.
But that is the general idea – he seems not to be letting them near him. I guess he didn’t think the women in training to be air stewards were capable of doing him damage; one of them was sitting right next to him.
– It might have been the last one in @Dr.Strangelove’s collection; it was either that or a picture very like it.
he def. doesn’t look like the guy you’d invite for a beer after work, does he?
– apparently there’s some question as to whether that video’s real; see post 1295 in the Russia Invades Ukraine thread.
I don’t think Putin’s affection for personal space is him being afraid of assassination. It’s been reported that he’s become an absolute lunatic with anti-COVID stuff and forces everyone who comes close to him to walk through a gauntlet of UV light and disinfectant sprays and hasn’t taken a in-person meeting for like 2 years prior to the invasion. Of course, take that for what it’s worth.
If it’s that, then the video with the flight attendants is even weirder. If, of course, that video is real.
Who knows. It’s probably either staged to make it look like it’s business as usual in Russia or it’s from a long time ago and they are faking the date. Certainly he could put these “employees” through any screening and disinfecting he wanted prior to his visit. He can’t ask that of heads of state and his cabinet.
Including having them quarantined for a couple weeks prior. What would he care if they just got volun-told to get locked up in a barracks somewhere beforehand?
Conor McGregor meets Putin in 2018: https://old.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/p87bwq/you_dont_just_putin_your_arms_around_putin/
Not sure if you’re joking or serious, but the first comment on that post is spot on.
I think this is reading too much into it. They did a casual fun pose, both putting their arms around each other, then switched to a more standard formal pose. These are two guys used to posing for photographs and giving different looks, that’s all.
This, more or less.
I’m not sure about the last line, some outside Europe and North America may risk it, but not many.
But the rest is spot on.
delete