Obama Welcomed With a Photo Album

U.S. President Barack Obama may not want to remember his first visit to Russia in 2005, when an airport dispute grounded his plane for three hours. But President Dmitry Medvedev gave him a memento of that visit anyway Monday.
Medvedev presented Obama with a photo album of his 2005 visit as he welcomed him to the Kremlin on Monday afternoon. State television showed Medvedev flipping through the pages as Obama looked at the photographs with a broad smile.
The photographs included nuclear sites that Obama visited in August 2005, Kremlin spokeswoman Natalya Timakova said.
Then-Senator Obama was part of a delegation that toured a nuclear warhead storage site in Saratov and a missile disposal site in Perm as part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. The trip ended on a sour note when Obama and his delegation were detained at the Perm airport for three hours amid a dispute with border guards who wanted to search their plane.
Obama, who arrived in Russia on Monday for the first time as president, faced no problems other than cold, rainy weather when his jet touched down at Vnukovo-2 Airport at 1:30 p.m., about 30 minutes ahead of schedule.
Obama waved as he exited the plane with his wife, Michelle, and two daughters, Malia, 11, and Natasha, 7. He shook hands with waiting Russian and U.S. officials, including Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak and U.S. Ambassador John Beyrle. Kislyak handed the U.S. first lady a bouquet of flowers.
Obama’s motorcade headed straight for the Kremlin, where the president and his family participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Later Obama met for talks with Medvedev in the Kremlin. Television showed the two, both wearing dark suits and red ties, sitting in armchairs and smiling at each other and reporters.
“Of course, this is an important event in the history of Russian-American relations,” Medvedev said before the presidents started a private meeting. “We’ll have a full-fledged discussion of our relations between our two countries, closing some of the pages of the past and opening some of the pages of the future.”
Together with the photo album, Medvedev gave Obama a collection of historical documents including a copy of document titled the “Address of the residents of the North American states to Alexander II, expressing gratitude for sympathy and assistance during the Civil War” and 10 copies of letters in French and Russian from Tsar Alexander II to President Abraham Lincoln, RIA-Novosti reported. The tsar signed the letters, “Your good friend.”
Medvedev said the rainy weather would help them to concentrate on work. Obama agreed that it would be better to stay indoors in such weather. The outside temperature hovered near 13 degrees Celsius on Monday afternoon.
While the two presidents met, Michelle Obama and her daughters toured the Kremlin museums and drank tea with Medvedev’s wife, Svetlana.
Interfax reported that Obama and his family were staying at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, where the presidential suite offers a panoramic view of the Kremlin. A hotel spokeswoman declined to confirm the report Monday afternoon.
Former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton stayed at the Marriott Grand about a kilometer up Tverskaya Ulitsa from the Ritz-Carlton, which opened after Bush’s last visit.
Scores of OMON riot police officers were deployed in downtown Moscow for Obama’s visit, and they cordoned off the area around the Kremlin, Okhotny Ryad and Manezh Square ahead of Obama’s arrival.
The security measures combined with bad weather caused large traffic jams in central Moscow.
Unlike many other countries visited by Obama, Russia has remained rather indifferent to him.
State pollster VTsIOM said Monday that 16 percent of Russians don’t even know who Obama is. It said 36 percent are indifferent to him, 20 percent say he awakens hope, zero percent hate him and only 1 percent admire him.
Meanwhile, gay activists abandoned plans to hold an unsanctioned rally Tuesday near the U.S. Embassy, citing fears that they could not guarantee the safety of participants.