NOT GOING AWAY: Quelle surprise: Vladimir Putin was re-elected president of the Russian Federation on Sunday in a landslide. But turnout was around 63 percent, according to exit polls, lower than both Putin’s original 70 percent target and the revised target of 65 percent. Oh, and Ella Pamfilova, head of the government-controlled election committee, said there were “relatively few” irregularities on election day. Marc Bennetts reports for POLITICO from Moscow.

MAYBE GOING AWAY: Expect today, among all the talk about who meddled in which elections worldwide, major fallout from revelations over the weekend that millions of Facebook users may have had their personal information harvested without their knowledge to swing voters for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Well, well. Public outcry followed suit, and regulatory pressure is on, if you believe politicians in both the EU and the U.S. POLITICO’s Mark Scott has the story.

TRYING NOT TO GET PUT AWAY: Former Romanian PM Victor Ponta is seeking to create a new Romanian pro-European, progressive movement — think en Marche — but first, as he faces charges of forgery, complicity to tax evasion and money laundering, he needs to stay out of jail, writes POLITICO’s Carmen Paun, who interviewed Ponta.

TEETERING: Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s government is teetering in the wake of a scandal over a social media post by Justice Minister Sylvi Listhaug that suggested the Labor Party — the youth wing of which was targeted by Anders Behring Breivik in a 2011 terrorist attack — cared more about terrorists’ rights than national security. Listhaug is now likely to face a no-confidence vote Tuesday. NRK has an overview of saga.

Good Monday morning. It’s a particularly dense week internationally, between the war of words about a murdered spy in the U.K. and a looming trade war with the U.S. When it comes to the North Korea crisis, we can at least take some comfort in the fact that one of the people with their fingers on a nuclear button of disputable size is a very stable genius, because who could exclude a sudden deterioration of warming relations. But among the chaos, at least this weekend delivered two certainties: The world now knows that Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are going to be around for another six and five years respectively, if not longer.

QUOTABLE

“It is important that there are sanctions against those who promote Putin’s projects abroad. Gerhard Schröder is the most important lobbyist for Putin worldwide. It should therefore be examined how the EU can act here.” — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, in an interview with Bild, speaking of the former German chancellor turned Rosneft chairman.

IT TAKES 20 TO TANGO  

‘EUROPEAN AXIS’: Let’s begin with German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, who is on his first international trip to meet with his G20 colleagues in Buenos Aires today. He’s there to forge a strong “European axis” with main partners from London via Paris to Rome, he said, and so send a signal against protectionism and what’s being perceived as rogue trade practice. Scholz will meet his U.S. counterpart Steven Mnuchin today. The world, as represented by the G20, “should stay together,” Scholz told reporters on his flight to Buenos Aires, dpa reports. His main message: “Free trade is a very important resource,” and the EU will preferably continue talking until there’s agreement.

G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs meet today and Tuesday — and their concerns go beyond steep tariffs: Europe actually fears that Donald Trump — after effectively telling the G20 last year that he doesn’t believe in it — in the end may want nothing less than to kill the World Trade Organization, POLITICO’s Jakob Hanke reports.

SPEAKING OF MAIDEN VOYAGES: Scholz isn’t the only person on a mission to seek exemptions from planned U.S. steel tariffs at the eleventh hour (by Friday, that is, when Trump’s tariffs kick in) — he’s not even the only new German minister. He and his colleagues are well-placed to now make their courtesy first visits, a few days after the new German government came into office, and throw their weight behind the EU’s efforts to avoid confrontation. Economy Minister Peter Altmaier, of Angela Merkel’s CDU, traveled to Washington on Sunday, where he will today meet Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, among others. “For me, the Americans are still our allies,” Altmaier told told the ARD before he left. Of course, you know where things stand if there’s a need to stress the obvious.

THE WAY OUT? Europeans may find common ground with the Trump administration in fighting against cheap Chinese steel imports. Altmaier said that he wanted “to avoid a trade war between Europe and the U.S.,” and for Europe “to continue to produce steel at competitive prices.” He added that he wanted the U.S., which is threatened by “those who sell cheap steal from scarp plants at dumping prices,” to do so too.

Meanwhile: Angela Merkel phoned Xi Jinping to congratulate him on his reelection, according to a readout delivered by her spokesman Steffen Seibert. Among other things, the leaders “discussed the problem of global steel overcapacity” — and called for further work to be done within the G20 global forum on steel. “In this context, they stressed the importance of close multilateral trade cooperation,” according to Seibert, whose boss can be pretty stubborn when it comes to that old way of doing world politics.

TROUVAILLE DU JOUR 

“With you as Bavarian minister-president I am sure that a strong Bavaria will also commit to a strong EU,” Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (of the EPP) wrote to the CSU’s Markus Söder, the new state premier. “I know that you, as a Bavarian minister-president, not only feel involved with Bavaria, but also with Europe.” Here’s your copy of the letter, obtained by Playbook, who speaks German so you don’t have to.

Translation: I know you first and foremost want to defend your absolute majority in this fall’s regional election, but don’t do it by blaming the EU (remember, you held a eulogy for me only months ago.) Also, come to Brussels occasionally; no one remembers having ever seen your predecessor Horst Seehofer, now Angela Merkel’s interior minister, around.

Why it matters: Many Christian Democratic and EPP hands will be needed on deck (perhaps even including best buddy Viktor Orbán) to defend their last stronghold in Germany, as some in the party still hope to be able to keep the far-right AfD out of the Bavarian parliament this fall.

IN TOWN TODAY 

Boris Johnson will visit Brussels to seek support from fellow EU foreign ministers in the wake of the Russian spy saga. Johnson wasn’t shy about escalating the war of words with Moscow on Sunday when he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that the U.K. had evidence that “not only has Russia been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok itself.”

Russia’s envoy to Brussels wasn’t convinced: Moscow had “nothing to do” with the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, the ambassador said, speaking on the same show. He suggested the U.K. should check the stock in their own laboratories, one of which is “actually only eight miles from Salisbury.”

Also in Brussels: UK’s Brexit Secretary David Davis, who will meet with Michel Barnier around lunchtime today and seek to finalize the Brexit transition deal. Get the full details in our colleague Jack Blanchard’s London Playbook, due to hit inboxes in an hour (get yours here, if you’re not already subscribed).

On another note, the Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha meets with her EU colleagues, who are strongly convinced that credit for progress with the North goes to South Korea. No diplomat who POLITICO spoke with over the past days considered Trump the source of progress. A press conference is planned for 4:30 p.m.

BRUSSELS HABITAT 

WHEN MARTIN SELMAYR IS ON VACATION: Last summer, Juncker’s then-chief of Cabinet used his holiday to put together an epic legal commentary on the EU’s new data protection rules, which come into force this May. According to a Spiegel report, he used a few days off this winter to do some less-elaborate writing, adapting his Wikipedia entry to reflect the importance of being earnest (in German only, it seems, as the English version still falsely suggests he’s a CDU party member.)

NEW ROLE: Editor-in-chief Daniela Vincenti leaves Euractiv to take on a new role with the European Economic and Social Committee, where she’ll start in April. She told Playbook she’ll join the Cabinet of future EESC President Luca Jahier (that’s news!) as spokesperson and strategic communication adviser — with a mission: “The EESC is a diamond in the rough and needs polishing to help the EU rediscover why we are in it together,” she said. It also desperately needs communication. For those of you whose natural habitat lies outside the very inner Brussels bubble, the EESC is the place where employers and trade unions meet to try and come up with joint positions toward the EU’s social policy lawmaking efforts. Meanwhile, Euractiv is looking for Vincenti’s replacement.