Joe Biden headed for a photo with fellow G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro at his final summit as US president on Monday – only to find they had already taken the picture without him.
Frustrated US officials blamed “logistical issues” for the blunder which meant that Biden missed out on the shot, along with the Canadian and Italian prime ministers.
It came during a South American tour during which Biden’s counterparts have been looking past the outgoing US president in political terms – and towards his successor, Donald Trump.
Biden’s swan song on the world stage has seen the 81-year-old try to shore up his legacy before Trump potentially takes a wrecking ball to it with his isolationist “America First” foreign policy.
World leaders including the 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 set-up.
They took to a stage, chatted and joked as they gathered to pose against the backdrop of the Brazilian city’s iconic Sugarloaf Mountain. The snap was over in a second.
Biden and the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, then came in from another direction, after a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit – but it was too late and the other leaders had already dispersed.
Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau and Giorgia Meloni look on in Rio. Photograph: Buda Mendes/Getty Images
The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, also missed the picture. She, Biden and Trudeau formed a separate huddle.
“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 the launch of the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 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.
President Vladimir Putin was conspicuously absent from the Rio summit. His arrest is sought by the international criminal court over the Ukraine war.
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