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 on Wednesday.



Putin’s tardiness is legendary, with journalists working in the Kremlin pool detailing regular waits of several hours as meetings rarely start on time.

His lateness varies from leader to leader, and in Putin’s terms, an hour’s wait is a sign of respect. He was 50 minutes late for his first meeting with Pope Francis in 2013. Ukraine’s ousted president Viktor Yanukovych, however, was once kept waiting for four hours, while European leaders regularly report a wait of an hour or more.

The lateness goes back to the early days of Putin’s presidency. He was 14 minutes late for the Queen in 2003, and a year earlier kept parents of children killed in a plane crash waiting at a cemetery for two hours.

In 2012, Putin was three hours late for a meeting with John Kerry in Moscow, leaving the US secretary of state to take a walk in Red Square and twiddle his thumbs before the green light came from the Kremlin. There are no known cases of leaders simply giving up rather than sticking it out.

Vladimir Putin and Queen Elizabeth in an open carriage in London in 2003. Photograph: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images

Given that Putin manages to make it on time to televised press conferences and set-piece events, the general assumption is that his tardiness when meeting with Russian and international politicians is a calibrated psychological policy.

But being late is something Putin has done for a long time. His former wife Lyudmila Putina once recounted how his lateness to their first dates reduced her to tears. “I was never late, but Vladimir Vladimirovich always was. An hour and a half was normal. I remember standing around in the metro. The first 15 minutes of lateness are OK, half an hour also fine. But when an hour goes by and he’s still not there, you start crying.”

In a possible sign that even Putin felt awkward at keeping the pontiff waiting, the Kremlin took the unusual step of explaining Wednesday’s delay.

“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.”

Peskov said Francis and Putin had a “deep” discussion for about an hour, touching on Ukraine and international affairs, as well as “universal human values which unite the Catholic and Orthodox worlds”. The Vatican said the discussion had mainly focussed on Ukraine and the pope’s calls for peace in the country. Putin was also given an “angel of peace” medallion.

Putin’s spokesman had strong words for Kenneth Hackett, the US ambassador to the Holy See, who had said in the runup to the meeting that he hoped the pope “could say more about concerns on territorial integrity” in Ukraine.

“To think you have the right to lecture the pope, this is quite something,” said Peskov. “In seriousness, it’s an outrageous attempt to quash the sovereignty of another state.”