Rarely has Barack Obama had such a cool reception from a foreign audience. Far from being excited by the presence of the charismatic US president at their degree ceremony, most of the students and graduates of Moscow’s New Economic School showed little enthusiasm for their guest.

While they applauded Mr Obama politely when he started and finished his speech, not once did they interrupt the core of his talk with spontaneous ­clapping, as happened with the US president’s two ­previous big foreign policy speeches in Prague and Cairo.