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Biden, Putin Summit Ends After More Than Three Hours Of Talks

By Mike Eckel June 16, 2021

The White House says a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has ended after about four hours of talks.

Live video of the summit in the Swiss city of Geneva on June 16 showed Biden giving a thumbs up as he left the lakeside villa where the meeting took place.

Both presidents are now expected to hold separate news conferences.

The pair met first in a smaller session and later in a larger meeting that was expanded to include more officials from both sides and which lasted about 65 minutes.

At a post-summit press conference, Putin said there was no hostility during the meeting and that the conversation was "rather constructive."

"Our assessment of many issues differ, but in my view both sides demonstrated the desire to understand each other and are looking for ways to get closer," he said.

Putin said he and Biden agreed to return their ambassadors to their posts in a bid to lower tensions, although there was no confirmation from the White House.

Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, was recalled from Washington about three months ago after Biden described Putin as a killer.

U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan left Moscow almost two months ago after Russia suggested he return to Washington for consultations.

Putin also said Russia and the United States shared a responsibility for nuclear stability, and would hold talks on possible changes to their recently extended New START arms limitation treaty.

The Russian leader dismissed Washington's concerns about the arrest of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, about Russia's increased military presence near Ukraine's eastern border, and about U.S. suggestions that unidentified Russians are responsible for a series of cyberattacks in the United States.

Putin said Navalny had ignored the law and had known what would happen if he returned to Russia from Germany, where he had received treatment for a near-fatal poisoning inside Russia with a Soviet-era nerve agent. He also accused Kyiv of breaking the terms of a cease-fire agreement with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Putin said he and Biden discussed the work of RFE/RL, which Putin said had been branded a "foreign agent" in response to what he said was similar U.S. moves against Russian media.

He said Washington and Moscow would start consultations on cybersecurity, claiming that most cyberattacks on Russia came from the United States.

The summit came with Russian-U.S. relations at a low not seen since the Cold War.

Biden and Putin's first round of talks at Geneva's Villa de la Grange lasted 90 minutes. It included only U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, plus translators.

Biden said going into the meeting that it was a discussion between "two great powers" and said it was "always better to meet face to face." Putin, for his part, said he hoped the talks would be "productive."

After finishing their first round of talks, the two met for two more sessions that also involved additional aides and translators.

On the U.S. side, the larger meetings were set to include Blinken, national-security adviser Jake Sullivan, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan, and two Russian experts from the National Security Council -- Eric Green and Stergos Kaloudis.

For the Russian delegation, the larger team included Lavrov, Putin's foreign affairs adviser Yury Ushakov, Lavrov's deputy Sergei Ryabkov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian military General Valery Gerasimov, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov, as well as the Kremlin envoys on Ukraine and Syria and Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

The summit came as Putin continues to consolidate his dominance of the country's political system, squeezing opposition activists like Aleksei Navalny and throttling independent media and NGOs ahead of Russia's September parliamentary elections.

A spokeswoman for Biden, the fifth U.S. president to meet with Putin, said the White House was "neither seeking to reset our relations with Russia, nor are we seeking to escalate." But Biden is also taking a sharper tack than his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Since taking office, Biden has hit Russia with two rounds of economic sanctions. But he's agreed to extend the New START arms-control treaty.

Biden has also declined to block completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will increase Russian gas exports to Germany and decrease transit fees paid to Ukraine for use of its pipeline network.

For Putin, now in his 21st year as Russia's preeminent leader, the summit amounts to a meeting of "great powers" -- a reflection of his nostalgia for Soviet might and a way to show his domestic audience that Russia can go toe-to-toe with the United States on questions of global importance.

As Putin and Biden met, the European Union's top diplomat warned that the bloc's testy relations with Russia will probably get worse and that EU member countries must not let Moscow divide them.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that ties with Russia are "at the lowest level" and the likelihood they will improve soon remains "a distant prospect."

Borrell's comments were made as he unveiled his recommendations on June 16 for a new strategy toward Russia.

Biden arrived in Geneva on June 15, while Putin's plane touched down in the Swiss city in the early afternoon on June 16, coming from Sochi.

The agenda was to include issues like arms control, cybercrime and espionage, climate change, and COVID-19.

Putin has signaled that what is off-limits for the summit is criticism of his record on human rights and civil society.

That includes last year's assassination attempt against Navalny, who has become Putin's most capable political opponent.

The findings by German and international laboratories that Navalny was targeted with a powerful Soviet-developed nerve agent, banned by international treaty, shocked many in the West, as did the Kremlin's decision to jail Navalny on what his supporters say is a laughable pretext.

During a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels on June 14, Biden was asked about the upcoming summit, and specifically about Navalny.

"Navalny's death would be another indication that Russia has little or no intention of abiding by basic fundamental human rights," he said. "It would be a tragedy, it would do nothing but hurt relations with the rest of the world, and me."

Scenes of chaos were sparked at the start of the June 16 meeting when the summit organizers let in journalists for a photo opportunity and they were blocked by Russian and U.S. security officers.

U.S. journalists described Russian security agents and members of Russia's state news media grabbing them to try to hold them back. U.S. journalists tried to shoulder their way in, and one U.S. reporter was knocked to the ground.

Also expected to figure in the talks in Geneva was the issue of cybersecurity after U.S. intelligence alleged that Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service had hacked into dozens of U.S. government computer systems.

A spate of ransomware attacks has also alarmed U.S. officials, who say many of the criminal groups behind the attacks are based in Russia, and Russian authorities are doing little to stop them.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/biden -putin-summit/31310310.html

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Biden, Putin Summit Ends After More Than Three Hours Of Talks