A ‘Cold Fish’ Who ‘Never Made Eye Contact’ – Former UK PM on Putin

Former UK Prime Minister Theresa May reflected this week on her encounters with Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, changes in the White House media environment, and what she believes those changes meant for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s explosive exchange with Trump in the Oval Office in February 2024.May was interviewed at the Henley Literature Festival in the UK on Oct. 8, as part of a special recording of The Independent’s political podcast “In the Room,” which examines what really goes on inside the rooms where decisions are made.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.Reflecting on her time in Downing Street, May said of Putin, “Once a KGB man, always a KGB man,” reiterating the words she used in a Sky News interview on July 30, 2026, in which she also said “it cannot be business as usual with Russia.”Recalling in Henley what it was like to come face-to-face with global leaders and sit across the table from Putin at Group of 20 (G20) meetings, she said Putin “wouldn’t make eye contact with anybody” and was a “completely cold fish.”“As prime minister, you meet other world leaders and you have to take them as you find them,” May said.“In Putin, I will say, once a KGB man, always a KGB man. He was a completely cold fish and one of the things I noticed particularly at G20 meetings when we were all sitting around the table was, he just wouldn’t make eye contact with anybody. He was sort of like this the whole time, but obviously we had very limited relations with Russia post Salisbury, and we’d had fairly limited relations before.” Other Topics of Interest Only Ukrainians Decide Leadership, Sybiha Says Foreign Minister Sybiha said that only the Ukrainian people have the right to decide leadership after Trump calls for a new president. May’s remarks referred to Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who were found slumped on a park bench in Salisbury, England, after being exposed to the Novichok nerve agent. The UK government concluded in September 2018 that the poisoning – which the Skripals survived but which led to the death of Salisbury resident Dawn Sturgess – was “almost certainly” approved by the Russian state.May added that she had always been “a bit of a Russia hawk” during her tenure as Home Secretary and said that the UK “hadn’t properly” responded to the killing of Alexander Litvinenko, which was always “hanging over” relations.Litvinenko was a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who was poisoned with polonium-210 in late 2006 and died as a result in a London hospital on Nov. 23 that year.On Trump and the White House media machineTurning to Trump, May remarked jovially, “I think I’m probably the only world leader whose hand he’s held,” referring to her official visit to the White House on Jan. 27, 2017, when the two leaders walked along the White House Colonnade. As reported at the time by UK newspaper The Guardian, the gesture “surprised” British officials and prompted a flurry of international media coverage.May went on to say that – in her view – Trump is “different” in his second term from his first, appearing to link this to changes in both the conduct of traditional set-piece meetings and the people surrounding the US president.“I think he was able to have four years when he was out of office, thinking about what he really wanted to do and about who he wanted to have around him,” May said.“There were some very key people around him in the first administration who were old hands if you like – some would say the establishment – who sort of knew about the way that most of these relations were conducted.”May described Oval Office meetings for which leaders would traditionally be briefed to “say warm words,” for example about “strengthening the relationship,” after which cameras would be ushered out of the room and a private meeting would begin.May then likened more recent meetings during Trump’s second term to “a TV show” and expressed disappointment with the way Zelensky was treated during his fiery Oval Office encounter with Trump on Feb. 28, 2024.“It’s a TV show now as we saw sadly with the way President Zelensky was treated on the first visit… the cameras are in there during this… they’re able to ask questions so it’s an entirely different environment.”The verbal clash between Trump and Zelensky erupted over ceasefire terms, the management of the war, a paused rare-earth minerals deal, and demands from the US administration for more “gratitude” from Ukraine for US military aid. Adrian is a professional social researcher, managing projects and producing reports for UK government departments and agencies. He lived and worked for several years in Ukraine and is now based in the UK.