Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) and President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso in the Kremlin
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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The President of Russia Picks Up Speed
// Protocol
Russian President Vladimir Putin received President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso at the Kremlin on Thursday. Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov was struck by the Euroleader's glowing smile.
Unlike Russian officials, with their uniformly undistinguished haircuts, European leaders sport a wide array of coiffure. The impression arises that those strange people are former hippies, and some of them hippies still. They us fine shampoo every day, of course. They wear suits. They have to. But they left themselves a tiny window for self-expression in their refusal to cut their hair short.
European Commission President Barroso is in Moscow for the second time. He was brought to the Representative's Office and intended to enter it. A protocol officer stops him. Condoleezza Rice waited less than a minute in front of the door the other day. But Barroso had to wait no less than seven minutes.
He nodded obediently and behaved quite differently from many of the other people who have been in that situation. They stand nervously glancing at the door, waiting for their historic meeting with the President of Russia to begin. They wait for it to open a crack, then a little more and then the order comes to admit them. And in the meantime, they get cold feet. That is the purpose of making them wait.
What does Barroso do? He turns abstractedly, as if just then noticing that he is being accompanied by two assistants, slaps his forehead and begins an intense conversation with them. He is so engaged that it no longer matters when or if the door open and he would have been upset if they had just then and he had to tear himself away to see the Russian president.
Barroso thus reversed the waiting process and gave a little master class on the ways of Brussels. There was a feeling that everything was waiting for his conversation with his assistants to end and not for the president to arrive. Barroso had learned that trick quickly in Brussels. Only after that did it become clear who the real pros at palace intrigue were.
The door opens and they begin tugging on Barroso's sleeve, at first hesitantly, and then much less so. And sure enough, he looks a little annoyed.
The Russian president, sitting across from Barroso at the negotiation table, tells him how glad he is that Russian and European Union experts are working on documents for them to sign in Moscow on May 8. He is glad the work is going according to schedule.
Barroso thanks him for the invitation and says he knows about the experts' efforts. He knows that his visit to Russia is strictly a formality before the Russia-EC summit and sees no reason to stray from the formalities.
The Russian president says that he is “absolutely in agreement” with him and, with a sigh, that he intends to discuss a “a wide range of questions.” Relations between Russia and the EU “have picked up the necessary speed,” and there is nothing else to do.
Barroso smiles at the Russian. A smile like that is a feat even for him, the biggest of the Eurobureaucrats, who goes for months at a time without leaving the fresh, clean, seemingly perpetually newly remodeled corridors of Europower.
I think about what that smile cost the former hippy. And about how that smiling person doesn't have to go to the barber ever again in his life if he doesn't feel like it. That's why he feels like a free man from a free country.
Andrey Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 22, 2005
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