Newsman: The top two super powers the United States and the Russia came face to face today at the Villa la Grange in Switzerland first time since the Biden administration took over the white house. US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin covered an “extensive” amount of ground in their initial one-on-one meeting, which led to a shorter expanded bilateral meeting. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin emerged from their meeting projecting optimism for future relations despite continued divisions on thorny topics from cyberattacks to human rights abuses. President Biden departed Geneva for Washington Wednesday following the Russia summit, marking the end to his first foreign trip as president.
In separate post-summit news conferences, Biden described the tone of the discussions as “good, positive” and Putin said it was “constructive” and there was a “glimpse of hope” regarding mutual trust.
President Joe Biden said at his concluding news conference “I know we make foreign policy out to be this great, great skill, that somehow is sort of like a secret code,” “All foreign policy is a logical extension of personal relationships. It’s the way human nature functions.”
“The tone of the entire meeting was good, positive,” Biden said, adding: “The bottom line is, I told President Putin that we need to have some basic rules of the road that we can all abide by.” “I did what I came to do,” he said, describing a day that ended as expected: with a better understanding of a shrewd counterpart but without any new areas of agreement.
Vladimir Putin also gave a somewhat similar narrative of his first meeting with President Joe Biden.After the hours-long summit, Putin acknowledged the meeting with Biden was “constructive.”
“I think both sides manifested a determination to try and understand each other and try and converge our positions,” he said.
“He’s a balanced and professional man, and it’s clear that he’s very experienced,” Putin said. “It seems to me that we did speak the same language.” Putin announced that he and Biden had reached an agreement to return the ambassadors of both nations to their respective posts and had agreed to begin “consultations” on cyber issues.
The main outcomes of Wednesday’s talks was the agreement to task experts to “work on specific understandings on what’s off-limits and to follow up on specific cases.”
“The principle is one thing, it has to be backed up by practice,” Biden said.
US President Joe Biden’s meeting Wednesday with his Russian counterpart came after months of diplomatic wrangling over the details, days of preparation with reams of research and the elaborate construction of two separate lakeside venues for the leaders to appear afterward. The meeting between the two leaders came as relations between the two countries have deteriorated in recent years, most recently with ransomware attacks that originated in Russia on critical U.S. infrastructure. The attacks added to the strain caused by election interference, increased aggression toward Ukraine and Putin’s crackdowns on political opposition.
Entering his talks with Russian president Putin, US president Biden pointed that cyber-attacks — and in particular the recent spate of ransomware hacks waged by criminal syndicates operating inside Russia — would constitute a major part of his talks.
And he revealed a telling aspect of his attempts to convince Putin of the seriousness of the crimes: “Well how would you feel if ransomware took down the pipelines from your oil fields?” he said he told Putin.
Biden did not say how Putin responded. But he said he told Putin the US has “significant cyber capability” and would respond to further cyberattacks.
“He knows it. He doesn’t know exactly what it is, but he knows it’s significant,” Biden said. “If in fact they violate his basic norms, we will respond.” US President Joe Biden told reporters following a bilateral meeting that “this is not about trust.”
Vladimir Putin continued to deny Russia’s role in recent cyberattacks against U.S. institutions. He also deflected when asked about the imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and alleged human rights abuses in his country, discussing, instead, gun violence in the U.S. and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Biden gave Putin a list of 16 items he considered to be critical infrastructure that should be considered off-limits to cyberattacks and that the U.S. would respond if attacks continue.
Presiden Biden told media they discussed the cases of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, Americans imprisoned in Russia; arms control measures; Navalny; the importance of a free press; cybersecurity; Russian attempts to destabilize democratic elections; Ukraine; and Belarus, among other topics.
“I told President Putin my agenda is not against Russia or anyone else. It’s for the American people,” Biden said. Biden said. “I made it clear to President Putin that we’ll continue to raise issues of fundamental human rights because that’s who we are.”
“I also told him that no president of the United States could keep faith with the American people if they did not speak out to defend our democratic values, to stand up for the universal and fundamental freedoms,” Biden continued. “So human rights are always going to be on the table, I told him.”
Biden also said, he told Putin that the U.S. would respond if Russia attempted to interfere in its elections again and that there would be “devastating” consequences if Navalny died while in prison.
“The bottom line is I told President Putin that we need to have some basic rules of the road that we can all abide by,” Biden said.
The success of Wednesday’s talks, Biden said, would be determined in the next few months based on whether Putin’s confrontational posture toward the U.S. improves. While Biden said he could not offer any confidence that Putin would change his behavior, he felt that “the last thing” Putin wanted was a Cold War.
Biden said it was in Putin’s self-interest to cooperate with the U.S., saying the Russian leader’s desire to preserve his credibility worldwide could influence his behavior.
The sit-down between the two countries ended slightly sooner than White House officials had suggested it would — lasting around just three hours — and consisted of one continuous session rather than the two that had been originally planned.
US President Joe Biden addressed today why his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin ended earlier than expected during his news conference following the meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.
“We had covered so much,” he said.
The summit, which was originally expected to last between four and five hours, wrapped up within three.
“The reason it didn’t go longer is when was the last time two heads of state spent two hours in direct conversation directly across the table going into excruciating detail? You may know of a time, but I don’t,” Biden said.
Biden explained, “So, there was a summary done by him and by me of what we covered. Lavrov and Blinken talked about what we covered. We raised things that required more amplification or we made sure we did not have any misunderstandings. It was after two hours there, we looked at each other like, ‘okay, what next?’ What is going to happen next is we’re going to be able to look back, look ahead in three to six months and say, did the things we agree to sit down and work out, did it work? Are we closer to a major strategic stability talks and progress? … That’s going to be the test. I am not sitting here saying because the President and I agreed we would do these things that all of a sudden it’s going to work. I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that I think there’s a genuine prospect to significantly improve the relations between the two countries, without giving up anything on principles and values.”
Biden and Putin were joined first by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, along with translators, and later opened up the meeting to a larger group.
Security around Villa La Grange, the picturesque mansion and lakeside park where the summit took place, had been extremely tight. The park was blocked off by thick rolls of barbed-wire fencing with Swiss police patrolling the grounds. A large section of the city had been closed off with police boats dotting the crisp waters of Lake Geneva, in a city known for its neutrality and international cooperation.
Biden arrived in Geneva Tuesday afternoon following days of meetings with America’s closest allies during a gathering of the Group of Seven leaders, which include Canada, the U.K., France, Italy, Germany and Japan, and a summit of the NATO alliance countries.
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The US and Russia released a joint statement on Wednesday following the summit between the countries’ two leaders, noting that “even in periods of tension,” the two nations share goals of “ensuring predictability in the strategic sphere, reducing the risk of armed conflicts and the threat of nuclear war.”
“The recent extension of the New START Treaty exemplifies our commitment to nuclear arms control. Today, we reaffirm the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the statement said. “Consistent with these goals, the United States and Russia will embark together on an integrated bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue in the near future that will be deliberate and robust. Through this Dialogue, we seek to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.”
