Why is Putin often late for important meetings?
(Baonghean.vn) - According to CNN, Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be someone who knows how to play the "waiting" game.
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| Illustration photo: TASS |
The Kremlin leader arrived in Helsinki at around 1 p.m. local time, shortly before the scheduled summit with President Donald Trump. According to observers, Putin has a “habit” of keeping other important figures waiting.
In 2016, for example, Mr. Putin arrived in Japan two hours later than scheduled for talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The year before, Pope Francis had to wait patiently for more than an hour at the Vatican for his Russian guest to arrive.
And more than once, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had to wait for Mr. Putin to arrive to start meetings.
However, the record for patiently waiting for a Russian leader probably belongs to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In 2014, amid the crisis over the annexation of Crimea, Putin kept Merkel waiting in Milan for four hours beyond the originally scheduled meeting time.
Is this a negotiating tactic? In all fairness, Putin’s late arrival at the Helsinki summit could be explained by the fact that the World Cup final in Moscow on July 15th marked the end of a month of global obsession with the tournament.
And after all, Putin was the first to arrive in Helsinki, because Trump delayed his arrival at the Presidential Palace, where the summit was taking place. As a result, the summit started an hour later than scheduled.
