Moscow Times
July 13, 2009
‘I Like Talking With Barack’
By Natalya Krainova / The Moscow Times
President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday praised what he called his “good personal relations” with U.S. President Barack Obama, whom he referred to informally by his first name.
“I like talking with Barack,” Medvedev said at a news conference at the end of the Group of Eight summit in L’Aquila, Italy, Interfax reported.
“I hope he has similar positive emotions,” Medvedev said.
Medvedev, who played host to Obama at a summit in Moscow earlier in the week, noted that both he and Obama are former lawyers. He said Obama had co-authored a legal reference book that he later studied. “It is curious to say the least,” Medvedev said.
The tradition of Russian presidents calling their foreign counterparts by first name dates back to Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. During his first informal meeting with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in Vancouver in 1993, Yeltsin declared after a few alcoholic drinks: “Bill, we are not rivals, we are friends!” according to “The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy” by former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott.
Former President Vladimir Putin and former U.S. President George W. Bush also called each other by first name.
Medvedev said Friday that he had found it harder to speak with Bush.
“I won’t hide the fact that last year, it was harder for me to talk with the president of the United States of America, as our positions on many issues differed,” Medvedev said. “More accurately, I’ll put it this way: Talking with the younger George Bush is a real pleasure he is a sincere person, a quick-witted person but unfortunately this had no consequences for our relations; frankly speaking, it sometimes had negative ones.
“In this sense, I hope that Barack Obama and I listen to each other better and understand each other better, too,” he said.
- Back to the Top -