King Salman of Saudi Arabia is an old man, and he’s used to some luxury. So whenever he travels by the Royal Saudi Air Force One, he is accompanied by another few Boeings, a few hundred servants, a busload of mistresses and … a golden escalator to help him disembark from his plane.
This time, however, someone had clearly not checked the proper functioning of his escalator. King Salman could be seen stuck midway his descent in a very unfortunate setting as his Russian hosts were awaiting him. To make matters worse, this was the first ever visit by a Saudi monarch to Russia.
Poor King Salman had to descend the rest of the escalator on foot and was visibly not too happy about it. Someone is getting fired for this when he’s back in Riyadh, you can be sure.
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After the unfortunate mishap, King Salman and President Putin held bilateral talks on oil production and a further diversification of the economic cooperation between the two nations.
During those talks, 15 cooperation agreements worth billions of dollars were signed in the fields of oil production, military and space exploration. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed the visit marked the moment when Saudi-Russian relations “reached a new qualitative level”.
Furthermore, the Saudis confirmed they would purchase the Russian S-400 defense system.
And then there was, of course, the issue of Syria.
Given that Syrian Dictator Assad will probably stay in power, Saudi Arabia was keen to know what are the future plans of Russian President Putin. It was mostly thanks to the help of the Russian military that the Syrian army was able to defeat ISIS. King Salman will likely want assurances from President Putin that the Iranian militia leaves Syria as part of any future peace settlement.
Source:
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-41520562/saudi-king-s-golden-escalator-gets-stuck
