If you happen to watch the English Premier League you’ll know that over the years some handshakes (or lack thereof) have drawn much attention. Patrice Evra and Luis Suarez, Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger, the simple act of clasping another man’s hand in yours often takes on epic proportions.

Well here’s one more handshake for the ages, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin hamming it up for the cameras at the UN. Not like their photo op left anyone with the illusion that these two are tjommies, the Guardian describing it as follows:

Their public handshake was a terse and stiff occasion, over in a few camera flashes. They came out of a door together, quickly shook hands, and were gone. There was no repartee. There were no smiles.

The photographs are hardly worth the effort of setting up this forced exchange of civilities, if the aim was to portray a friendly relationship between the powers that divided the world between them from 1945 until 1991 and are today once again uneasy rivals. Putin and Obama walk towards each other like marionettes. They raise their hands robotically. They seem frozen for a moment, as if neither can actually bear to touch the other. Then the cold contact.

Cold is being somewhat generous, that moment was so devoid of genuine emotion it looked like the end of a horrid Tinder date. Let’s let the Guardian sum up why these two will never be bosom buddies :

Obama’s foreign policy is rich in liberal rhetoric, weak on actually helping anyone. Putin is a dangerous Machiavellian manipulator, but shaking hands with him is the very least of what rebuilding Syria would actually mean. But probably the handshakes will stay brittle, the body language cold, and fine words and a few bombs will be all the finely moral leaders of the west ever offer, while hell is built before their eyes.

Bonus failed Obama handshake – the Irish Prime Minister Taoiseach Kenny left hanging…

[source:guardian]