A viral clip shared online shows Vladimir Putin waiting to meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi during the second annual Russia-Africa summit. In the video, Putin paces around the room silently before straightening items on a table.

Anton Geraschchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, tweeted the video on July 27. Since then, it has received 15,000 likes.

This isn’t the first time that Putin was made to wait before meetings. In July 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan left the Russian president alone for about 50 seconds in Tehran, Iran while in September 2022, Erdogan and the leaders of Azerbaijan, India and Kyrgyzstan delayed their meeting with Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The Russia-Africa summit, which takes place on July 27-28, intends to form agreements in trade, economics, science and technology. The discussions also included the African Peace Initiative, in which African leaders pressed Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

Putin faced a rebellion last month by the Wagner Group mercenaries. U.S. intelligence believes that Putin has cancer leading to his erratic behavior, leaked military documents show.

The summit is considered by some as a political reset for Russia as its number of allies dwindles due to the war.

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Putin said that Russia would send 25,000-50,000 free tons of grain to Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Mali, Eritrea and Central African Republic. This was in response to Russia having left a deal that allowed about 33 million tons of grain to leave Ukraine.

Egypt is the world’s largest grain importer with about 50% coming from Russia and another 30% from Ukraine. Because of this, El-Sisi pushed Putin for a resolution to the war to both “reduce the existing human suffering” and the negative supply consequences experienced by African countries.

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Alex Nguyen

Article by Alex Nguyen

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