TOPSHOT - (from left to right) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Chinese President Xi Jinping joined G20 leaders for a group photo at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on November 18, 2024. — AFP
Joe Biden arrived for a photo with fellow G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro at his final summit as US president on Monday -- only to discover they had already taken the picture without him. Frustrated US officials attributed the mishap to 'logistical issues,' which resulted in Biden missing the shot, along with the Canadian and Italian prime ministers. This incident occurred during a South American tour where Biden's counterparts have been politically looking beyond the outgoing US president and towards his successor, Donald Trump.
Biden's farewell on the global stage has seen the 81-year-old attempting to solidify his legacy before Trump potentially dismantles it with his isolationist 'America First' foreign policy. World leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and French President Emmanuel Macron walked down a red carpeted ramp at Rio's stunning bayside museum of modern art to the group photo setup. They gathered on a stage, chatting and joking as they posed against the backdrop of the Brazilian city's iconic Sugarloaf Mountain. The photo was taken in an instant.
Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then arrived from another direction, following a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit -- but it was too late, and the other leaders had already dispersed. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also missed the picture. She, Biden, and Trudeau formed a separate group.
'Due to logistical issues, they took the photo early before all the leaders had arrived. So a number of the leaders weren't actually there,' a US official said on condition of anonymity. US officials denied that Biden missed the photo -- officially for Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's launch of an alliance to curb world hunger -- to avoid appearing alongside Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Biden had earlier urged the G20 leaders to support Ukraine's 'sovereignty' in the face of Russia's 2022 invasion. Russian President Vladimir Putin was notably absent from the Rio summit. His arrest is sought by the International Criminal Court over the Ukraine war.
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