putin: G7 leaders mock Putin in jokes about stripping off

World leaders mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tough-man picture at a G7 lunch in Germany on Sunday, joking about whether or not they need to strip all the way down to shirtsleeves — and even much less.

“Jackets on? Jackets off? Will we take our coats off?” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson requested as he sat down on the desk in Bavaria’s picturesque Elmau Citadel, the place Chancellor Olaf Scholz was internet hosting the summit of seven highly effective democracies.

The leaders — from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the USA and the European Union — contemplated the dilemma.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, steered they await the official image earlier than disrobing however then Johnson quipped “Now we have to indicate that we’re harder than Putin” and the joke saved rolling.

“We’ll get the bare-chested horseback using show,” Trudeau mentioned, referring to Putin’s notorious 2009 photo-op of himself using shirtless on a horse.

“Horseback using is the most effective,” European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen mentioned, with out apparently weighing in on the clothes situation itself.

Johnson interjected: “We have got to indicate them our pecs.”

The leaders posed — jackets on — for pictures earlier than reporters have been hustled out of the room, leaving the sartorial debate behind closed doorways.