Boris Johnson remarked that were Vladimir Putin a woman, then without all the machismo, there would probably have been no war in Ukraine.
Putin's terse response was that perhaps Boris had forgotten about Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands war of 1982?
The jokes kept coming.
At the G7 summit, Boris and Justin giggled wondering whether they should take their jackets off, or even their shirts (a la shirtless Putin on his horse).
The one female leader Von der Leyen (EU co-president) felt she had to join in the unbecoming banter.
But despite all the practice and coaching (including scripted humour, no doubt), the G7 leaders did not come across as truly confident deep down, as if they are not sure about where this is all going.
Is it because they are presiding over a disastrous war in eastern Europe and a winter of destruction of living standards and industry in western Europe?
Back to reality
The armed forces of Ukraine are losing up to a thousand casualties a day, including killed, missing in action, and wounded. Its economy is disappearing down the plug hole.
Then, Lithuania decides this is a good time for a (partial) blockade of the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, on the Baltic Sea.
European bureaucrats are urgently scrambling to put out this fire before Russia implements its “non-diplomatic response.”
Meanwhile, the Kurds have been thrown under the bus by Nato, as the prize for Ankara's assent to Finland and Sweden's accession into that “defensive alliance.”
Turkey is about to send thousands of troops into Syria, where Russian forces are on alert.
The worm turns
I am not one of those who imagines Putin being some grandmaster chess wizard, able to also use judo moves in parallel to outwit his opponents.
However, he and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, should never, ever, be underestimated nor ridiculed. Especially not now when things are escalating monthly (US soldiers on their way to Romania and Poland, being just one example).
The Russian duo do have a detailed game plan. Three decades after the placement of a drunk Boris (Yeltsin) in the Kremlin, the broader Russian leadership is intent on a fundamental rearrangement of the European and Eurasian order.
Western financial weapons of mass destruction have not detonated the Russian economy, instead boomeranging on the EU.
Gita Gopinath, deputy managing director of the IMF, did forewarn all earlier this year that this might “weaken the dominance of the US dollar.”
Talking of game plan, the secretary general of Nato, Stoltenberg blurted out that: “We have been preparing for this since 2014,” when the Maiden coup was rolling in Kyiv. This inadvertently provides context to the Donbass and the current invasion.
The window for a peace deal is gradually closing, mimicking the enveloping creeping cauldrons on the battlefields.
I repeat: the venerable Henry K does know what he is talking about. Unlike many elected leaders, he knows his history -- but powerful interests want this war to go on and on.
In that sense, Zelensky's plea that the war should not last beyond this year might be seen as a ray of hope, or hopelessness.
As Lennon sang: Give peace a chance?
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G7 vs BRICS and more?
Besides the laughs, the G7 did come up with a challenge to China's Belt and Road Initiative.
They assume that the war in Ukraine has permanently blocked the BRI from Asia into Germany.
So, they announced a $600 billion initiative of their own which the Global South is meant to get excited about.
But it wasn't American help that built the Padma Bridge, to provide one topical example.
William Pesak, in the Asia Times, asked: “When was the last time the G7 actually followed through in its grand communiques?"
His advice: Don't bring a butter knife to an economic gunfight.
Trading places
The other summer announcement of the Indo Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) initially sounded more plausible, except that it is not a free trade agreement. US politics is too dysfunctional to ratify anything more.
These things take years to get off the ground, even if implemented.
By contrast, the Chinese-Japanese led RCEP (East and Southeast Asian trade area) has been up and running since January. The ship has sailed.
Beijing will not be losing too much sleep. The city was the scene for the latest BRICS summit -- Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. It is expanding to BRICS + as Argentina and Iran officially requested to join.
A few days before, Putin had presided over the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) where he called for a determined shift to an alternative financial system.
Moscow is already promoting its MIR payments and a financial messaging system to overcome the shutoff from SWIFT. Let us see where we arrive by the end of this decade.
Sub-continental rumbles?
To date, India has not yet finalized the rupee/ruble format for trade. So, an Indian cement importer has gone ahead and paid for coal imports from Russia with Chinese yuan. This is almost unheard of.
Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Abdul Momen commented that he would learn more about how India is purchasing oil from Russia (though he seems to have been bumped in Delhi, which found time for his Iranian counterpart, though).
Faruque Hassan, head of the BGMEA, insisted this week that garments exports need to rise substantially in the Russian market.
The Commerce Ministry is moving full speed ahead, endeavouring to initiate a free trade agreement with the Russian-led Eurasian European Union (EAEU) to facilitate this.
Are these some minor local signals of a broader rebuff in Bangladesh, the sub-continent, and the Global South to a G7 call to take Russia on?
While much of the cosmopolitan elite may back the G7 to the hilt to stick it to Putin, I suspect the middle and working classes do not concur.
Whatever might be in the works, this is playing with fire.