When Putin eats ice cream, everyone follows suit

At an airshow in Russia where all kinds of aircraft showed off their 56 inches of chest up there in the sky

July 29, 2017 04:26 pm | Updated 04:26 pm IST

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech at the MAKS 2017 air show

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech at the MAKS 2017 air show

I am sorry I am not a pretty woman today, the man said, as he plonked himself down next to me in the bus. He must have been in his late 60s. We were travelling to an air show at Rameskoye airport at Zhukovsky. The show was called Mezhdunarodnyj Aviatsionno-Kosmicheskij salon.

I had already tried saying the whole name all together rapidly—and loudly once or twice—but it was giving me a headache. It’s simpler to call it MAKS. I smiled at my companion and showed him my red eye-patch that had the word ‘Virgin’ scrawled on it, and said, “I am going to have her wrapped around my head. That way I won’t be distracted by your pretty face today.” He laughed and asked, “Too much vodka?” “In Russia, yes,” I answered.

I had never been to an airshow before. And that was where all kinds of aircraft showed off their 56 inches of chest, up there in the sky. I was hoping there wasn’t going to be any chest-bumping today, or tomorrow. In Lviv, Ukraine, in 2002, a Su-27 that had been showing off fell into the crowd.

Some 77 died, and more than 500 people were injured. The good news, I had read somewhere, was that airshow accidents caused by mechanical reasons, collision and loss of control, had decreased from 37 in 2010 to only 17 in 2014. We were already halfway through 2017, which is why I was carrying an eyepatch instead of a helmet.

Awaiting Vlad

Ramenskoye airport, about a two hour ride out of Moscow, the area where the Gromov Flight Research Institute was located, is where they tested the Buran orbiter, which is the Russian equivalent of the Challenger that broke to pieces. It has one of the longest runways in the world, nearly 18,000 feet in length.

Once there, I found that the first thing on show was the chaos. That is pretty much what happens on the first day of the show, especially when the Russian president is scheduled to show up. A large portion of the marquees had been cordoned off.

Russians in various security uniforms, some as large as oak trees, blocked the horizon while we waited to get a glimpse of Putin, who we were told would provide a photo-op with the MiG-35, a fourth-generation fighter plane that was still undergoing trials and was two years away from hitting the production line.

It could take 35 minutes or three hours and thirty-five minutes we were told. Maybe longer. Where Putin was concerned there was no saying.

When Putin finally appeared, I couldn’t get a shot of him on my mobile camera. Then he disappeared into the Rostec stall. He didn’t hug the MiG-35. He didn’t even go near it.

Much later, I got the story of what really happened from my Russian friend. He translated it for me from the newspaper that he was reading.

It may be that his sense of humour had something to do with it; it was so funny that I didn’t even request him to read it out in Russian, and I didn’t make any notes. I could be entirely wrong, but here’s what I gathered.

Putin emerged from his aircraft wearing one of his sharper suits, the kind that cuts through any kind of Russian opposition from fifty paces away, got straight into a golf cart, looking as though he had just overseen plans to fix the next American elections and simultaneously annexed a few remaining holdouts in the Russian periphery, and headed for the exhibits, with the full paraphernalia of security, including possibly a mobile missile shield, at a cruising speed of maybe 10 km an hour. I wanted to ask if Putin wore dark glasses and if this was actually a scene out of a Russian remake of The Spy Who Shagged Me .

Best served cold

Then, unexpectedly, Putin stopped at an ice cream stall. Apparently, according to unverified Kremlin gossip, Putin and Russian ice cream are in some kind of a relationship. Sometimes, he carries it too far. It seems he gifted the Chinese President Xi Jinping a whole box of ice cream instead of a case of vodka. The Chinese took it home and ate it and now, China-Russia relations are at a much higher level.

At the stall, Putin magically pulled out some money from his pocket and handed it over to the young woman. He wanted a vanilla bar. So everyone in the entourage now wanted to eat ice cream. As they jostled, the woman in the stall lost count of the number of ice creams she was handing out. She looked a little worried because Putin was not David Copperfield and could not produce too many more roubles out of thin air. When the industry minister wanted an ice cream as well, the Rostec chief, Sergey Chemezov, offered to pay for all the ice creams. Putin arched his eyebrow and asked, “So, how much profit did you make last year?” “80 billion,” Chemezov beamed. Putin harrumphed, “Vokay, you pay. You can afford it.”

Eating ice creams, everyone headed for the VIP enclosure where dignitaries and high-ranking defence personnel were gathered even as Sukhoi T-50s vied for attention with the food that was being served. From what I gathered, the high and mighty looked at the overhead manoeuvres as though they had always seen futuristic jets turn tricks in the sky. But they stuffed their mouths with the sausages as though they had never seen or eaten sausages before or would ever be able to do so again.

Afterwards, Chemezov came and addressed us journalists and told us about the amazing relationship Russia has with India in terms of market share. Therefore, in keeping with the fact that we were paying for Russian ice creams as well, I went out and bought an ice cream. A vanilla bar. It was very creamy. The airshow was okay. The ice cream was pretty good.

Here is the post script: Maybe New Delhi should send over some Russian ice cream to Xi Jinping. If it works for the Russians there is no reason to disbelieve that it won’t work for us as well.

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