French President Emmanuel Macron refused a Kremlin request to take a Russian COVID-19 test on arrival in Russia. Sputnik/Kremlin via Reuters
French President Emmanuel Macron refused a Kremlin request that he take a Russian COVID-19 test on his arrival to see Russian President Vladimir Putin this week.
Consequently, the visiting French leader was made to sit at a distance from his Russian counterpart during their extended talks on the Ukraine crisis in Moscow.
Captured sitting at opposite ends of a table so long that it triggered ridicule on social media and conjecture, even from diplomats, that Putin could be using the opportunity to send a message.
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In contrast, three days after Macron and the Russian leader had their socially-distanced meeting, Putin received his Kazakh counterpart Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, where the two men shook hands and sat close to each other, separated only by a small coffee table.
When Putin met his Kazakh counterpart Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, they sat much closer to each other. /Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via Reuters
The reason why Macron initially refused to do the test, two sources from the French president's entourage told Reuters, was to prevent Russia from acquiring a sample of Macron's DNA.
They told the news agency that Macron had been given a choice to either accept a PCR test carried out by the Russian authorities and be allowed closer physical contact with Putin, or refuse and have to follow stricter social distancing rules.
"We knew very well that meant no handshake and that long table. But we could not accept that they get their hands on the president's DNA," one of the sources told Reuters. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the French president had refused the test and said Moscow was not concerned by his decision, therefore he had to stay a 6-meters from Putin to protect the Russian leader's health. "There is no politics in this, it does not interfere with negotiations in any way," he said.
Macron apparently took a French PCR test before departure and an antigen test administered by his own doctor in Russia. "The Russians told us Putin needed to be kept in a strict health bubble," the second source said.
Macron's office said the Russian health measure "did not seem to us to be either acceptable or compatible with our diary constraints," particularly the length of time he would have had to wait for the results.
When asked specifically about DNA theft, Macron's office said: "The president has doctors who define with him the rules that are acceptable or not in terms of his own health protocol."