, Columnist
Putin Overwhelms Obama at the Sulky Summit
The St. Petersburg meeting of the G-20 may well go down in history as the Sulky Summit, but also as a qualified Putin victory.
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When Russian President Vladimir Putin came out to welcome world leaders to this week's G-20 summit at the Constantine Palace in Strelna, a St. Petersburg suburb, many wondered how it would go between him and U.S. President Barack Obama.
The latter had, after all,likened Putin to a bored, slouching kid at the back of the class. The Russian ex-KGB officer, eight years Obama's senior, took offense. In an interview the day before the summit, he resorted to the royal "we" when commenting on Obama's remark: "I am surprised sometimes to read about body language, about us being bored or otherwise behaving differently. Who but ourselves can say what's in our heads and our souls?"