I don’t really have too much to say about Putin and Bush’s summit in Bratislava yesterday.  Sadly, as is almost always the way with meetings between heads of state, their discussion took place behind closed doors.  All we, their adoring publics, got to hear was their sanitised press conference (full transcript here), where democracy was mentioned, but no actual criticisms were directly made. 

Perhaps one of the most telling pointers was that, during the conference, Bush spoke of democracy during his introductory comments, without prompting.  Putin, on the other hand, only spoke of it when forced to by journalists questions.

Finally, I was amused and depressed in equal measure by Putin’s official website, kremlin.ru.  While the English language version had the full transcript of the press conference, the Russian language version excised Bush from the proceedings entirely, and carried only the profound words of President Vladimir Putin.