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Awkward pictures of Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin: A brief history

Awkward pictures of Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin: A brief history

Yesterday world leaders gathered at the UN general assembly in New York, with the Syrian civil war top of the agenda.

Nowhere was the international community's failure to find a unified response more evident in the speeches delivered by Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, the US president insisting Bashar al-Assad was the conflict's chief culprit but his Russian counterpart saying the Syrian regime was the best hope for defeating Isis.

This policy gulf was visible in every awkward photo that the presidents took together.

And our personal favourite from the day:

The Syrian civil war, the Edward Snowden affair, the Ukraine crisis and the annexation of Crimea have seriously strained relations between Obama and Putin, famously represented in the below photo from the 2013 G8 summit and also brought to the public consciousness in the third season of House of Cards.

The whole world is hoping they can reach a compromise to help find a solution to the Syrian civil war, and the resulting refugee crisis, however.

As a side note, what's remarkable is that the above photo is not, by any means, the most awkward featuring Putin and a US president.

More: Politicians and awkward photos - a brief history

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