When he penned his eyewitness account of the 1917 Russian Revolution, American journalist John Reed famously titled it Ten Days That Shook The World.
But 10 days is too long for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. They’ve shaken things up in a week.
It began with the Putin-Trump telephone conversation on 12 February and their presidential pledges to kickstart relations.
It continued with the Munich Security Conference and a schism between Europe and America.
Next stop Saudi Arabia for the Russia-US talks: the first high-level in-person contacts between the two countries since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It is a week that has upended traditional alliances, left Europe and Ukraine scrambling to respond, raised fears for European security and put Russia where it wants to be: at the top table of global politics, without having made any concessions to get there.
One image dominates Wednesday morning’s Russian newspapers: senior Russian and American officials at the negotiating table in Riyadh.
The Kremlin wants the Russian public and the international community to see that Western efforts to isolate Russia over the war in Ukraine have failed.
Russian media are welcoming the prospect of warmer ties with Washington and pouring scorn on European leaders and Kyiv.
“Trump knows he will have to make concessions [to Russia] because he is negotiating with the side that’s winning in Ukraine,” writes pro-Kremlin tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets. “He will make concessions. Not at America’s expense, but at the expense of Europe and Ukraine.
“For so long Europe had gone around all puffed up, thinking of itself as the civilised world and as a Garden of Eden. It failed to notice it had lost its trousers… now its old comrade across the Atlantic has pointed that out…”
On the streets of Moscow I don’t detect that level of gloating.
Instead, people are watching and waiting to see whether Trump will really turn out to be Russia’s new best friend and whether he can bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
“Trump is a businessman. He’s only interested in making money,” Nadezhda tells me. “I don’t think things will be any different. There’s too much that needs to be done to change the situation.”
“Perhaps those talks [in Saudi Arabia] will help,” says Giorgi. “It’s high time we stopped being enemies.”
“Trump is active. He’s energetic. But will he do anything?” wonders Irina.
“We dream that these negotiations will bring peace. It’s a first step. And maybe this will help our economy. Food and other goods keep going up in price here. That’s partly because of the special military operation [the war in Ukraine] and the general international situation.”
Putin and Trump have spoken on the phone; their two teams have met in Saudi Arabia; a presidential summit is expected soon.
But a few days ago the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets tried to imagine what the two leaders had said to each other during last week’s phone call.
They came up with this rendition:
“Trump called Putin.
‘Vladimir! You’ve got a cool country and I’ve got a cool country. Shall we go and divide up the world?’
‘What have I been saying all along? Let’s do it!….”
Make-believe? We’ll see.
