Seeing Russia’s President Vladimir Putin breaking down in laughter is a rare sight indeed. However, Putin’s giggle was publicly on show courtesy of his agriculture minister’s idea of exporting pork to Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.
The scene, which took place at an official meeting, was recorded on camera and quickly became viral, with the initial tweet of the footage receiving more than a thousand retweets and the upload onto YouTube viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
In the meeting about agricultural development, Russia Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachyov was arguing that Russia should look to Germany’s export strategy for inspiration. The presentation was going well until the minister started to talk about pork being exported to Indonesia, to the bemusement of President Putin and his high ranking officials.
He continued talking about growing pork production in the Far East, but the president could not help but interrupt, with a bit of chuckle. “Indonesia is a Muslim country, they don’t eat pork,” Putin said, followed by giggles by his officials and others in the room.
The minister tried to move on from the topic but the giggles continued with the president having to put his hands on his face to cover his laugh.
Featured image by CBS News.