The story behind the table… Putin’s “ice rink” – The piece of furniture today symbolizes the gap between Moscow and the West

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The Italian-made piece of furniture was specially commissioned by Kremlin officials who wanted to restore the opulence of Tsarist Russia

The largest country in the world can sit around a wooden table, although some would comfortably call it a table… “skating rink”!

Located in a Kremlin conference room, the six-metre-long table became famous when a camera captured Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron sitting at opposite ends during their meeting.

As expected, the table stole the show and generated a variety of comments on social media. Even memes circulated, including one depicting the two leaders playing badminton. But many see it as becoming a symbol of Russia’s growing estrangement from the West, even as the French president made a last-ditch effort to pre-empt the war in Ukraine.

A Kremlin spokesman said the seating arrangement was necessary to protect Putin’s health because Macron refused to be tested for coronavirus in Moscow. However, two weeks later, Putin sat down at a small coffee table with Imran Khan, then Pakistan’s prime minister and a Putin ally.

The Kremlin’s most famous table has been associated with Putin since he became Russia’s president, but it was actually made in Italy.

When the photo of the Putin-Macron meeting was published, a Spanish cabinet maker quickly claimed to have made the table, but the public soon learned that it was actually made for the Kremlin in 1995 by Oak, an Italian furniture company. Owner Renato Pologna provided sketches of the table and a certificate signed by Boris Yeltsin, along with documents revealing the table’s dimensions and that the top is made from a single piece of white lacquered beech and decorated with gold leaf.

The large, white conference table wasn’t the only Italian-made piece of furniture the Kremlin ordered. Renato Pologna told Reuters news agency that shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian Federation officials began investigating what the Grand Kremlin Palace looked like before the 1917 revolution so that it could be restored to its pre-Stalin glory. of. The furniture designs were sent to Oak, who billed the Kremlin with $20 million. Pologna says Russian authorities scanned all the furniture with giant scanners to check for hidden microphones.

“It’s wonderful!” Yeltsin said in July 1999 when he saw the renovated palace for the first time, according to a report by “EL PAIS”. Determined to restore the glory of the tsars, the Russian president had spent a fortune renovating the Kremlin. The Grand Palace was built for Nicholas I as the residence of the imperial family in Moscow. Important spaces such as St. Catherine’s Hall had been meticulously restored, but some decried the dubious aesthetics of other renovations. “It’s not just bad, it’s monstrous,” Russian architectural historian Alexei Komets told the Guardian.

The “pharaoh”-sized project also had… other problems. In September 1999, the BBC and other international news outlets reported that Swiss and Russian prosecutors were investigating alleged bribes paid to Kremlin officials by Mabetex, the Swiss company responsible for restoring and furnishing the Grand Palace and other buildings. of the Kremlin. The scandal touched President Yeltsin himself when it was revealed that his daughters had used credit cards paid for by Mabetex.

By the time Russian prosecutors closed the case, Yeltsin had left his palace. On the last New Year’s Eve of the 20th century, the Russian president announced his resignation in a surprise televised address in which he introduced his successor, Vladimir Putin, a virtual unknown until his appointment as prime minister a few months earlier.

Putin’s huge conference table and others placed around the Grand Palace are there to intimidate, the international media write. Putin is placing unwelcome guests like Macron in the Siberian boardroom, a tactic he has used with other European leaders such as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. However, when Putin met with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the two men sat in the middle of the table.

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