Russia on Friday said French President Emmanuel Macron was made to sit at an enormously long table for his talks with Vladimir Putin because he refused to take a Kremlin-performed Covid test.
The leaders sat at opposite ends of an unusually long table in the Kremlin on Monday, when Macron came to Moscow with a mission to defuse fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the decision to subject Macron to the huge table was taken after the French leader refused to take a Covid test performed by the Kremlin's medics.
In such cases, he said, the Kremlin has to take "additional sanitary protocol on protecting the health of our president and his guests."