Medvedev: And here's the button for my trap door... Photo by Pete Souza/White House

The White House updated its official Flickr with several photos from President Obama’s recent jaunt to Moscow. To sum up: Barack and Dmitry look like total BFFs; Putin likes weird-looking desserts; and while the White House did its best to blur out the details, it looks like the Prez has some pretty cool Inspector Gadget-type toys.

Did President Obama make a flub today when talking about when he met his wife, Michelle? Just before his speech to a university here in Moscow this afternoon, Obama mentioned his first meeting with the future First Lady in an offhand remark. “I don’t know if anybody else will meet their future wife or husband in class like I did, but I’m sure you’ll all going to have wonderful careers,” the president said. The thing is: Obama didn’t technically meet his wife at school. Although both are Harvard Law School grads, Michelle Obama got her degree in the spring of 1988 while her future husband didn’t actually start school there until later that fall. (He graduated in 1991). The Obamas officially met in Chicago in 1989, when the future president was a summer associate at the Sidley Austin law firm and Michelle was assigned as his mentor. Was what Obama said wrong? Technically no, considering Obama was still going to school when he met his wife. But for those keeping close watch on Obama trivia—ie, the White House press corps—the statement did seem a wee bit off.

Your Gaggler is in the press pool today, and I can now report first hand: the Russians really aren’t that excited about President Obama. Almost every trip, foreign and domestic, Obama has been the subject of curious, often cheering crowds. On domestic trips, some people even show up to boo. Not here. On the ride to and from Vladamir Putin’s house in Western Moscow, most Russians on the street this morning regarded Obama’s motorcade with total indifference. No cheering. No booing. It’s been a whole lot of, well, nothing. The motorcade route is usually sprinkled with dozens and dozens of people taking photos of Obama and his entourage as his limo passes. This morning, your Gaggler counted a grand total of four.

This may not be purely about Obama. As we blogged yesterday, the U.S. isn’t exactly popular with the Russians right now. That’s in part why Obama has dedicated a huge part of his day to working PR. He delivered what White House officials described as a major speech on U.S./Russian relations at a university here in Moscow. The message: the U.S. and Russia don’t need to be antagonistic to each other in order for both to succeed. "The pursuit of power is no longer a zero-sum game—progress must be shared," Obama declared. “No one nation can meet the challenges of the 21st century on its own, nor dictate its terms to the world.” As the White House previewed last week, the speech was reassurances of how the U.S. respects Russia, its heritage and its sovereignty. The problem for Obama: Most Russian TV stations apparently didn’t carry the speech, which means the impact of his words will be more limited than the White House had hoped.

Putin: What's That On the Floor?

On Tuesday morning, President Obama drove about 25 minutes outside of central Moscow to have breakfast with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s former president turned prime minister. The meeting was highly anticipated to say the least. As your Gaggler noted yesterday, pretty much everybody seems to think Putin is still running the show here in Moscow, although Obama and the White House, when asked, won’t even go there. Here’s one telling sign: Obama visited Putin in the compound where he lived as president, Novo Ogaryovo. According to the locals, Putin liked it so much that when his term ended as president, he just decided to stay on, leaving current Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to find alternate housing.
 
Today’s meeting was the first time Obama and Putin had ever met. Upon arrival, Putin met Obama outside for a quick handshake, before they headed upstairs to an ornate living room, where they briefly spoke to reporters. The initial meeting was cordial, but in your Gaggler’s view, it seemed a little awkward. Speaking through an interpreter, Putin talked first, welcoming Obama to his compound. He spoke of days when ties between the U.S. and Russia “flourished” but acknowledged periods of “grayish moods” between the two. “With you, we link all our hopes for furtherance of relations between our two countries,” Putin told Obama. It was incredibly upbeat language for Putin, but his body language was another story. Although Obama sat looking at him intently, Putin, from your Gaggler’s viewpoint, rarely made eye contact with POTUS. The Russian PM sat slumped in his chair, eyes to the ground virtually the whole time. So much for warm relations.

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The dirty little secret about presidential foreign trips: There is A LOT of hurry up and wait. In about two hours, President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will hold a news conference. For now, reporters are holding in perhaps the most opulent press filing center your Gaggler has ever seen. We're inside the Kremlin Palace, in a huge room featuring massive gold chandeliers and lots of ornate woodwork, including handpainted wood floors. There are at least three gold-plated fireplaces. Not too shabby.

Rainy Red Square

Good morning from Russia! Your Gaggler is in a very rainy Moscow awaiting the arrival of President Obama who is scheduled to land here in a few hours. He’ll spend the next three days meeting with top Russian leaders, including President Dmitry Medvedev and former president turned Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Your Gaggler wrote an opus last week going over what this trip is all about. But we’ll sum it up again here in just one word: “reset.” Obama is hoping to turn the page on what has been chilly relations between the U.S. and Russia in hopes of finding new common goals. But that looks increasingly difficult, given the widening differences between the Washington and Moscow on issues like Iran and the U.S.’s plans for a missile defense shield. Administration officials had hoped to announce significant progress on a the renegotiation of a nuclear arms treaty that Obama and Medvedev announced at their first meeting last April in London. But last night, a senior White House official downplayed those expectations, admitting the negotiations had been "very complicated," in part by the Moscow's opposition to the missile shield. The Russians want the U.S. to drop it. Obama has so far refused. Gary Samore, Obama's point man on weapons of mass destructions, told reporters that that White House is hopeful the presidents will announce "some progress" on a new arms treaty, which would replace an agreement between the U.S. and Russia that expires this December.

Just as he has in Europe and other foreign stops, Obama hopes to bank on his enormous international popularity and bypass foreign leaders to appeal directly to the Russian people. But he won’t be able to do that as easily as he has in places like Germany and France. According to a new poll from the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes, only 23 percent of Russians polled have “confidence” in Obama, his lowest poll rating in the world. And, believe it or not, that’s one of the more positive numbers of the survey, which generally finds Russians sour on Americans.

Here's more from President Obama's interview this morning with the Associated Press’s Jennifer Loven:

On Russia, Obama was asked why he plans to meet with former Russian President Vladimir Putin in addition to talks with current leader Dmitry Medvedev. “(Putin) still has a lot of sway…and I think that it's important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev that Putin understand that the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations is outdated — that's it's time to move forward in a different direction,” Obama told the AP. “"I think Medvedev understands that. I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new, and to the extent that we can provide him and the Russian people a clear sense that the U.S. is not seeking an antagonistic relationship but wants cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation, fighting terrorism, energy issues, that we'll end up having a stronger partner overall in this process.”

Also on foreign policy, Obama said he was “not reconciled” with the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons. The president also expressed some reservations about his recently announced policy of putting some high risk Guantanamo Bay detainees in “indefinite detention” as the administration moves to close the prison next year. “It gives me huge pause,” Obama said, suggesting he may not follow through on the policy.

In perhaps his most interesting comments, Obama weighed in on the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action this week, in which it decided in favor of a group of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who sued the city for reverse discrimination. The ruling overturned a verdict laid down by an Appeals Court judge named Sonia Sotomayor. (Maybe you’ve heard of her.) SCOTUS, Obama said, was “moving the ball” on affirmative action, but he noted that the court had ruled out the use of racial preferences in hiring. Still, he spoke sympathetically toward the white firefighters, telling Loven, “I’ve always believed that affirmative action was less of an issue or should be less of an issue that it has made out to be in news reports.”

In addition to the Michael Jackson comments, Obama also weighed in on life at the White House. His biggest pet peeve: having to wear make-up all the time. "The shine police," he groused. On the plus side, he raved about the White House pastry chef, who “makes the best pie I’ve ever tasted."

When President Obama met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for the first time last April, both men called for a new day in relations between the two countries. Obama said he wanted to push the “reset” button, while Medvedev called for an end to the “drift” in the U.S./Russian dynamic. They pledged to forge a more pragmatic relationship than their predecessors, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, who bonded personally even as ties between Russia and the U.S. sank to new lows. Obama did not want to be “buddy buddy” with Medvedev, a senior administration official told reporters at the time. The White House, according to the official, wanted to forge something “more substantial,” a rapport of “candor and frankness” that would produce real results.

As Obama prepares for his first visit to Russia next week, the boundaries of that new relationship will face its first real test. Obama and Medvedev are expected to announce some progress toward the renegotiation of a crucial arms control treaty that aims to cut down on nuclear weapons stockpiles. But despite all the conciliatory talk these past few months, the two sides continue to face significant differences over several issues, including how to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions and a proposed U.S. missile shield in Europe. In recent weeks, the Russians have suggested that Obama will not reach his goal of reducing nuclear arms unless he drops the U.S.’s missile defense plans. But on Wednesday, the White House signaled in some surprisingly tough talk that it would offer no such concessions on that issue or another hot topic for the Russians: a U.S.-backed push to add former Soviet states Ukraine and Georgia to NATO, a move Moscow strongly opposes.
 
Asked in a briefing what “reassurances” Obama might give Medvedev on those two issues, Michael McFaul, the president’s top adviser on Russia, unloaded. “We’re definitely not going to use the word reassure in the way we talk about these things,” McFaul told reporters. “We’re not going to reassure or give or trade anything with the Russians regarding NATO expansion or missile defense… We don’t need the Russians.” They would be no concessions on those issues “in the name of reset.” McFaul insisted.