Vladimir Putin has been ridiculed over his latest bizarre stunt in the Kremlin, after footage of it was released.
The Russian president was filmed congratulating the first woman in space and the only woman to have been on a solo space mission, Valentina Tereshkova, on the 60th anniversary of her launch.
But – despite the celebratory nature of the visit – he decided to stand several metres away at a white lectern, while looking down at his seated guest.
A few Kremlin staff members seem to be hanging around at the back of the room, but otherwise it seems Putin is addressing just one person.
The Financial Times’ Moscow bureau chief, Max Seddon, shared the clip and described it on Twitter as a “weird Putin moment”.
He added: “Not that he is speaking from a lectern, even though nobody else is there bar a couple of Kremlin hangers-on.”
The bizarre set-up comes as Russia continues to struggle to conquer Ukraine or consolidate its current gains in the face of Kyiv’s new counteroffensive.
And Twitter was obviously on hand to join in.
There were also references to the bizarre series of image showing Putin speaking to people in the Kremlin from the end of a comically large table. There was speculation that this was due to worries about the president catching a Covid infection.
The Russian president has made several unusual PR choices since he ordered his troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
In March, the Kremlin released a video which seemed to show Putin walking around the destroyed Ukrainian town of Mariupol, in the middle of the night, driving around empty streets.
Ex-NATO representative Lord Ricketts described the trip as “laughable”.
He’s even led some bewildering public speeches, such as a two-hour annual meeting with the Federal Assembly where the audience looked bored to tears.
Putin has also been embarrassed, on camera, by some of his counterparts.
In November, his Armenian ally Nikol Pashinyan, seemed to give Putin a frosty reception when they posed for a group photo.
And in July, he was left waiting for a meeting with Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, looking clearly uncomfortable, shifting his weight from one foot to another, in an excruciating 58-second clip.