Visible chemistry with Angela Merkel, in one of the more thrilling highlights of the 2006 two-day German-Russian Petersburg Dialogue Conference.
‘Nyet George, it’s not like with the Scottish. You’re meant to keep your trousers on.’
The instructors looked at each other but said nothing, even though the window had only been recently fixed after last week’s child-hurling incident.
‘It’s not my bread Dmitry, it is the Russian people’s bread. So no, you can’t’
Vladimir Putin’s soirees are a whirl of mild flirtation, intellectual stimulation and gaiety.
NB Arkady in the middle is choking on his tongue.
There is only one word for ‘underwhelmed’ in the Russian language. But there are 45 for ‘torture camp’.
Another painful employer-employee dynamic. Admittedly by this stage of his career Boris Yeltsin was drinking paint thinner for breakfast.
Fifty billion euros and 20,000 tractors later, Putin agreed not to flay his Italian counterpart for entering his personal space.
‘File the teeth down, skin the face then put it in the pit with the others’
‘Dear prime minister, please don’t kill my daddy’ ‘Idiot child’