Video of Putin Being Kept Waiting by Erdogan Goes Viral: 'Sweet Payback'

"They also serve who only stand and wait" is a proverb Vladimir Putin could relate to after he was kept hanging on before shaking the hand of his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a video that has gone viral.

During his visit to Tehran, Iran, on Tuesday, the Russian president had strode into a room expecting Erdogan to be right behind him. Instead, Putin was left standing on his own for about 50 seconds amid the whirring of cameras from the media contingent in front of him.

Putin started to fidget and look increasingly awkward as he awaited Erdogan to finally come in and greet him in a clip that as of Wednesday morning, had received more than 3.1 million views.

Some speculated that Erdogan had sought to give the Russian leader a taste of his own medicine in the meeting in which the pair discussed Syria and allowing grain blockaded by Russia to leave Ukraine's ports.

The Turkish leader has been a victim of Putin's renowned penchant for keeping world leaders waiting. Ahead of a 2020 meeting in Moscow, Erdogan ended up taking a seat due to Putin's tardiness.

"Those 50 seconds that Erdogan made Putin wait, looking frazzled in-front of cameras say plenty of how much has changed after Ukraine," tweeted journalist Joyce Karam. She said that it was "sweet payback" for Erdogan who "was humiliated by Putin" as he made him wait "in a power game play in Russia."

While patience is a virtue, some have speculated that Putin deliberately keeps world leaders waiting as part of a psychological ploy from which no one is exempt.

In June 2015, Putin showed up an hour late to his meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican, while in 2018, he kept the former President Donald Trump waiting for 45 minutes ahead of a scheduled summit in Helsinki.

However, in those incidents Putin was relatively punctual compared with the more than four hours he kept former German Chancellor Angela Merkel waiting in 2014 and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych two years earlier, according to Radio Free Europe. Queen Elizabeth II had to wait for nearly a quarter of an hour to meet Putin in 2003.

Even Putin's former wife, Lyudmila Putina, said that on their first dates, he would always be late, and that "an hour and a half was normal," The Guardian reported.

It is not as if Putin is short of pricey timepieces to keep track of the hours, as he has a watch collection reportedly worth around $700,000.

There is speculation over why right-handed Putin wears these watches on his right wrist, whose lack of movement during the Tehran visit on Tuesday added to rumors about his health.