Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn’t have asked for a better reception.
He was greeted with a red carpet, a jet fly-over and a ride with President Donald Trump in the armored presidential Cadillac limousine known as “The Beast.”
Putin’s beaming smile in the window of the limo as they drove off the tarmac together summed up the moment.
Trump said Thursday that “within the first two minutes, three minutes, four or five minutes” he would know whether the summit would be a “good meeting or a bad meeting.”
The limo ride with Putin lasted at least 10 minutes.
It is not entirely clear whether the plan was to have Putin ride with Trump. An NBC News producer spotted a car with Moscow plates on the tarmac that appeared to be waiting for the Russian president.
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The grand welcome and warm handshakes between the two leaders set a congenial tone for what was expected to be tough negotiations on resolving an extremely bloody conflict that has left tens of thousands dead on both sides.
The optics of those first interactions aren’t likely to be lost on the millions of Ukrainians watching how Putin was received, and how it contrasted with their own president’s reception at the White House in February, when Volodymyr Zelenskyy was harangued by Trump in front of TV cameras. Zelenskyy may be invited to the next round of talks, but for many watching this meeting between Trump and Putin it may seem clear who has the upper hand.
Friday’s meeting wasn’t the first time a Russian and American president rode together in the presidential limo. In 2010, President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev both rode in The Beast to have lunch at Ray’s Hell Burger in Arlington, Va.
But Medvedev, unlike Trump, had not been accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, nor was he involved in a conflict that critics have called a blatant land grab.
