Ouch.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was seemingly left in the lurch during a diplomatic summit in Iran on Tuesday, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan making him wait for a joint appearance.
Video from the summit meeting showed Putin arriving in a room set up for a joint announcement.
Putin stood awkwardly in the room for over 45 seconds before Erdoğan enters.
International observers pointed to the video as a sign of Russia’s tarnished reputation following the country’s war against Ukraine.
Those 50 seconds that Erdogan made Putin wait, looking frazzled in-front of cameras say plenty of how much has changed after Ukraine: pic.twitter.com/giGirqaYYP
— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) July 19, 2022
Putin has made other world leaders wait for meetings before, in moves some have claimed are cynical diplomatic insults.
He made Erdoğan himself wait outside a Moscow meeting room for nearly two minutes in 2020 for Syria negotiations, according to the Express.
Is this humiliating for Putin?
Some suggested the Tuesday exchange amounted to payback for the 2020 faux pas.
Turkey has sought to act as an intermediary since Russia launched its aggressive invasion of Ukraine in January.
The NATO member state has at times proven more willing to talk to Russia than its European peers, but even Erdoğan’s Russian sympathies have limits.
In the Tuesday Iran meeting, Putin discussed a potential deal to allow the export of grain from Ukraine, according to the Washington Post.
The Russian Black Sea blockade of Ukrainian ports has blocked off the country’s considerable grain product from international markets.
Putin suggested he’d be willing to allow the Ukrainian grain through if western leaders pulled off sanctions on Russian grain exports.
#UPDATE Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday thanked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for mediating talks on export of grain from Ukraine, saying there was progress.
“With your mediation, we have moved forward,” Putin told Erdogan in Tehran, according to the Kremlin pic.twitter.com/yMg0PIjzdz— AFP News Agency (@AFP) July 19, 2022
Iran’s Islamist dictator defended Putin’s Ukraine invasion in the Tehran summit, strengthening ties between two countries that face severe western sanctions.
Tens of thousands of poorly-trained Russian soldiers have been killed or injured in a “special military operation” that Putin suggested he expected to end in days at the invasion’s onset.
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