Biden, Putin to hold first summit in Geneva

WASHINGTON, May 26 ------ US President Joe Biden and Russian leader Vladimir Putin will hold their first summit next month in Geneva, both sides said Tuesday, though no breakthrough is expected in the fraught relationship. The meeting in the wealthy Swiss city -- home to many UN organizations and location of a historic 1985 summit between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US president Ronald Reagan -- will be on June 16.

"The leaders will discuss the full range of pressing issues, as we seek to restore predictability and stability to the US-Russia relationship," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. The Kremlin confirmed the summit details and said in a statement that Putin and Biden would be discussing "issues of strategic stability," as well as "resolving regional conflicts" and the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden, making his first international trip as president, will go to Geneva immediately after separate summits with his key Western allies in the G7, NATO and the European Union.

The face-to-face meeting with the Kremlin leader comes amid levels of tension not seen for years, with Washington now dialing back its ambitions to little more than establishing a relationship in which both sides understand each other and can work together in specific areas. Unlike in 2009, when Biden was vice president and then president Barack Obama's administration declared a diplomatic "reset" with Putin's government, expectations going into the summit this time are far lower. A high-profile encounter will suit Putin at a time when he faces a largely hostile West, but Biden's decision to meet should not be taken as a mark of approval, say White House officials.

"We don't regard the meeting with the Russian president as a reward," Psaki said. Since taking office, Biden has imposed new sanctions against Moscow over what US authorities say was the Russian role in the massive Solar Winds cyber-attack and repeated meddling in the 2020 presidential election. In addition, Washington has harshly criticized Moscow for the near-death poisoning and subsequent imprisonment of one of the last open opponents to Putin, Alexei Navalny.

Tensions are also high over Ukraine, where Russia already controls swaths of territory and recently massed troops on the border in a new show of force. Yet another focus is on Russian-dominated Belarus, which caused an uproar this week after authorities forced an airliner passing overhead to land, then arrested an opponent to President Alexander Lukashenko who had been aboard. And where Biden told an interviewer that he agreed with the description of Putin as a "killer," the Russian government has formally declared the United States to be an "unfriendly" country.

Source: gmanetwork.com