Turkish President Erdogan insults President Putin

Tehran, Jul 21: Russian President Vladimir Putin was left waiting and fidgeting for nearly 50 seconds by his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan ahead of an official meeting in Tehran on Tuesday. The same video is now going viral, prompting social media users to wonder whether it was an act of revenge by Erdogan as the Russian President has a history of making other leaders, including Erdogan, wait before talks.

 

 

 

The video, released by the Turkish presidency, showed Putin walking inside the meeting room, only to find it empty.

 

 

 

He then stood in front of his chair and the two flags of the nation, with his hands, clasped mouth twitching. He can then be seen changing his stance as Erdogan enters the room. "Hello, how are you, good?" asks Erdogan in the video as both leaders smile at each other and shake hands. The meeting in Iran was Putin's first with a NATO alliance leader since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. In 2020, in Moscow, Erdogan was left waiting for about two minutes by the Russian leader ahead of their scheduled meeting. The Kremlin leader has also made Pope Francis wait over an hour before their meeting in 2020-- a second such incident between Putin and Pope. In 2013, Putin was almost 50 minutes late for his meeting with the Pope. He had also made Ukraine’s ousted president Viktor Yanukovych for four hours before their meeting. Meanwhile, the Russia-led war raged in Ukraine as Moscow's forces shelled eastern and southern parts of the country.

 

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Earlier in the day, the White House said, citing intelligence, that Russia was seeking to annex Ukrainian territory by installing proxy officials and establishing the rouble as the currency in Russian-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine. The Russian embassy in Washington dismissed the comments as "fundamentally false".