However, Akayev forgot two major things: Boris Yeltsin was talented at playing the spoons as a musical instrument and equally talented at making liquor disappear. Yeltsin ended up using Akayev's shiny bald head as a percussive surface for his spoons routine , a trailblazing maneuver in the history of international relations that has yet to yield any treaties of note.

3 Stockholm - 1997

At a 1997 conference held in Sweden concerning nuclear weapons, Yeltsin kicked off the evening by guzzling champagne, ranting about how Swedish meatballs reminded him of tennis star Bjorn Borg's face, and then almost falling off the stage.

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"Your eyes, they are like two delicious pools of lingonberry sauce."

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He followed this by announcing before the world that Germany and Japan had nuclear weapons, that he was now in Finland, and (to the surprise of everyone else in the Kremlin) that Russia was to cut its nuclear stockpile by one-third.