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Obama Gets a Sense of Putin's Super-Villain Soul

Vladimir Putin — Danger Room’s favorite super-villain — has a knack for making first impressions. In 2001, he showed President George W. Bush his mother’s crucifix to give Dubya a sense of his soul; the same year, he surprised Azerbaijani President Heidar Aliyev by presenting Aliyev with his 1949 graduation certificate from Leningrad’s KGB academy. […]

Vladimir Putin – Danger Room's favorite super-villain – has a knack for making first impressions. In 2001, he showed President George W. Bush his mother's crucifix to give Dubya a sense of his soul; the same year, he surprised Azerbaijani President Heidar Aliyev by presenting Aliyev with his 1949 graduation certificate from Leningrad's KGB academy. He also knows how to make a thoughtful gift: Putin gave canine-averse German Chancellor Angela Merkel a toy dog, and he set up Gerhard Schroeder, Merkel's predecessor, with a sweet retirement present.

Current Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has a sense of fun as well: The Moscow Times reports that Medvedev presented Obama with a photo album of his 2005 visit to Russia, during which Obama's congressional delegation was briefly detained at the Perm airport. According to the MT, Russian state TV "showed Medvedev flipping through the pages as Obama looked at the photographs with a broad smile."

President Barack Obama met yesterday with Putin, and we'd love to know if he tried to turn on the KGB charm or spring any surprises ("Mr. President, your birth certificate"). From the sound of things, though, Obama didn't swoon over Putin. In an interview with CBS News, Obama called him "smart, shrewd ... [and] unsentimental." Putin, who stepped aside to become prime minister, is still widely viewed as the power in the Kremlin. And in his CBS interview, Obama inadvertently referred to Putin as "president" three times:

It's a fair mistake: Putin was, after all, president of Russia for eight years. And hey, he could be again!

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