Patience may be a virtue, but few people would keep the pope waiting. Vladimir Putin is an exception, however, with the Russian president showing up an hour late to his meeting in the Vatican in 2013. “It's true that the meeting with the pope happened a little after the planned time,” Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian journalists. “This was because talks in Milan went on longer than expected and our motorcade was quite slow moving through the streets of Milan and Rome. Of course, during the whole time we kept in touch with the Vatican and explained our lateness.”

The lateness goes back to the early days of Putin's presidency. He was 14 minutes late for the Queen in 2003. Monastic etiquette considers even a small delay as the height of bad manners. The queen herself, by the way, arrived at that meeting five minutes before the start. The Kremlin then explained that the delay was due to London traffic jams, but the British side retorted: "The Russian delegation was provided with a" green corridor. "

In 2014, the Russian President kept his German counterpart Angela Merkel waiting for an agonising four hours and 15 minutes. Peskov explained then that Putin was delayed in Belgrade. Let's note, at the meeting with Angela Merkel, the Russian president is late with an enviable regularity.

And even US President Barack Obama was forced to delay his plans by 40 minutes in 2012 as Mr Putin was running late. Hillary Clinton, an American politician, later recalled the incident in one of her speeches. So, she said: "He is a very tough person. Very arrogant. He often behaves as if he does not care about the interlocutor. " Clinton explained that the latecomer did not bring his apology and was not shy to demonstrate that he was bored at the meeting with Barack Obama.

In 2013, at a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry Putin was three hours late. After this case, the British edition of The Dayly Mail published a report containing perturbations about Putin's delay. The US Secretary of State tried not to show his discontent and held a dialogue with Putin in a benevolent manner. The representatives of the Russian president did not announce the reason for the delay. That allowed the US press to accuse the leader of Russia of not observing the etiquette.

But why does the Russian leader have such a poor record on timekeeping for some of the most important people in the world? He may be a busy man but so are the other world leaders forced to fit their schedules around his. Some put his tardiness down to psychological games, given that he is often on time for press conferences and television interviews. The President of the Russian Federation also kept the Prime Minister of India, former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, Tsakhiagiin Elbegzhorzh, the President of Mongolia, foreign investors, the President of South Korea, the King of Sweden and other representatives of foreign countries waiting.