Footage taken before the meeting on Tuesday showed Putin fidgeting, shifting his weight and making a series of awkward faces for the cameras for nearly a minute before Erdogan finally greeted him. It was unfamiliar territory for the Russian leader, who has developed a reputation for keeping world leaders on hold, on purpose, sometimes for hours after scheduled talks begin. Some speculated it may have been payback for a 2020 meeting in Moscow that saw Erdogan wait so long to enter the conference room that he took a seat. Reporters captured the moment Putin entered the room on Tuesday with the expectation that Erdogan would quickly follow suit. Instead, he stood still amid the sound of camera shutters. With his hands tied in front of him, the usually stoic Russian leader was seen shuffling his feet and sucking his cheeks during the 50-second wait. Finally, Putin let his hands fall to his side with a hint of exasperation as Erdogan casually appeared and the pair shook hands. “Those 50 seconds Erdogan kept Putin waiting, staring blankly at the cameras, says a lot about how much has changed since Ukraine,” Joyce Karam, senior correspondent for the Middle East media organization, said on Twitter. National News. Karam called the exchange “sweet payback” for Erdogan after Putin kept the Turkish leader waiting for about two minutes before a meeting in 2020. Turkish media reported at the time that Erdogan and his entourage were left humiliated after being made to wait outside in a vestibule in footage widely shared by Russian news media. Erdogan is leading efforts to strike a deal to allow thousands of tons of grain blocked by Russia to leave Ukraine’s ports. NATO member Turkey has special responsibility under the 1936 Montreux Convention for maritime traffic entering the Black Sea. He suggests that Russia allow Ukrainian grain ships to leave Odessa on designated routes, as long as the ships are checked for weapons. Although Putin praised the Turkish leader for brokering the talks, saying some progress had been made, he was less impressed with Erdogan’s ambitions to build a security zone south of the Turkish-Syrian border. Erdogan claims that the buffer zone will protect Turkey from attacks by Syrian Kurds and argues that “it is not possible to expect Turkey to remain inactive and away from this problem.” Some speculate that Putin’s delay in meeting international leaders is a calibrated psychological policy dating back to the early days of his presidency. Putin was 14 minutes late for the Queen in 2003 and a year earlier kept the parents of children killed in a plane crash waiting at a cemetery for two hours. Putin showed up an hour late for his meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican in June 2015. In 2018, then US President Donald Trump was kept on hold for 45 minutes before his scheduled Helsinki summit with the Russian president. According to Radio Free Europe, Angela Merkel was left waiting four hours and 15 minutes for a meeting with Putin in 2014, while Viktor Yanukovych, when he was president of Ukraine, once waited four hours before sitting down with the Russian leader.
