The moment Vladimir Putin has craved - a red carpet from Donald Trump for a man with blood on his hands
The two leaders greeted each other with a handshake after stepping off their planes at the Elmendorf-Richardson military base in Anchorage, Alaska - and a smiling Trump even applauded Putin as he approached him on a red carpet that had been laid out.
It is exactly the moment Putin has craved, writes Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett. The Russian leader has been welcomed on to US soil as an equal for a meeting of great powers.
The red carpet, the handshake, the flypast - only North Korea would give an indicted war criminal a greeting like this.
It marks the end of his isolation from the West in the most spectacular fashion.
Instead of sanctions, Trump has rewarded the Russian president with the equivalent of a state visit.
The pariah looks more like a partner.
1:30
US correspondent James Matthews, reporting from the ground in Alaska, describes the meeting on the tarmac as "extraordinary".
There was the red carpet and more for a man with blood on his hands, he writes. Putin - aggressor, pariah and wanted for war crimes.
Quite the CV for a man who was applauded on to the airbase by his host, the US president.
It couldn't have looked more cordial - a superpower moment with a smile and a shake between the men who hold peace in their hands.
If that wasn't enough, there followed a military flypast to dress the spectacle.
A smiling Putin seemed duly impressed, but what it says about the power dynamic in the relationship will trouble onlookers in Ukraine - and one moment they may have found particularly galling.
Posing for photographs with Trump before waiting media, Putin was asked: "Will you stop killing civilians?"
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The panel was compiled by Sumaiya Motara and Saranka Maheswaran, interns on the Guardian's positive action scheme
