Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) – A video clip that showed Russian President Vladimir Putin waiting for his Kyrgyz counterpart, Sader Gabarov, on Thursday, sparked widespread controversy on social networks.
In the video, Putin waited about 30 seconds for Gabarov to come before their meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Economic Cooperation Organization meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
At that time, Putin tried to rectify the situation and began flipping through a set of papers, before the Kyrgyz president arrived to exchange greetings and peace with him.
Adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister, Anton Gerashchenko, commented on the video, saying: “Putin was publicly humiliated again. Previously, the Kremlin head made world leaders wait for him. Now the President of Kyrgyzstan allows himself to be late for a meeting with Putin.”
The Russian president was known to be late and made everyone wait for him. Tweeters described what happened as “embarrassing”, and is a reflection of the recent losses of the Russian army in Ukraine, they said.
Last July, Putin faced the same situation when Erdogan was about a minute late during their meeting in the Iranian capital, Tehran. At the time, tweeters said that Erdogan’s response was deliberate to respond to a previous incident in Moscow, and that the Russian president made him wait more than two minutes with his delegation in 2020.