Vladimir Putin got up close and personal as he shook hands in a very strange way after months of sitting metres away from everyone due to Covid.
The tyrant performed the odd gesture as he walked out on stage to formally announce the illegal annexation of four regions of Ukraine in Moscow today.
As he did, he was greeted by four officials, each representing one of the territories, and tried to shake all eight hands at once.
The diminutive despot looks tiny compared to the four towering chiefs of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson as they all put their hands in a stack like a sports team.
The ritual is particularly bizarre when compared to Putin's previous appearances, where he would purposefully host dignitaries from either side of a comically large table.
It came to the world's attention at the start of this year when he and French President Emmanuel Macron sat at either end of a 20-ft table during a meeting in Moscow.
The French leader was hosted at distance because he refused a Kremlin Covid-19 test because he didn't want Russia having his DNA.
Putin's lengthy diatribe today culminated with the signing of documents that, from Russia's perspective, has made four Ukrainian regions part of the Russian Federation.
During his rant, he claimed the people of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia were now part of Russia, which is refuted by Western powers who have branded the referendums a sham.
Putin then turned on the West, claiming the US and its allies "continue to look for new chances to weaken and destroy Russia."
"After the collapse of the USSR, the West decided that the world would forever have to put up with its dictates ... the West expected that Russia would not be able to cope with such dictates and fall apart ... but Russia has been reborn and strengthened," he said.
He said the West has waged a "hybrid war" against Russia and the separatist administrations it backed in eastern Ukraine.
The West has broken its promises to Russia, he added, claiming they have no moral right to talk about democracy.
The warlord also claimed Western countries have acted as the imperalist states that they had "always been".
Amid fears of rising nuclear tensions, the dictator claimed the US had created a "precedent" by dropping two nuclear warheads on Japan at the end of World War II.
Fears of nuclear war have grown since Putin said last week he was "not bluffing" when he said Russia was prepared to use nuclear weapons to defend its territory.
Today he said Russia would use "all the power and all the means" at its disposal to defend its new lands from attacks by the West or Ukraine.
U.N. chief Antonio Guterres called the annexation a "dangerous escalation" that would jeopardise prospects for peace.
"It can still be stopped. But to stop it we have to stop that person in Russia who wants war more than life. Your lives, citizens of Russia," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Thursday evening address.
The four regions cover some 90,000 square km, or about 15% of Ukraine's total area - about the size of Hungary or Portugal.
