In mid-June, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin’s first in-person meeting (since the former entered office) took place, and both world leaders described the meeting as fruitful, with Biden declaring that "The tone of the entire meeting was good, positive,” and Putin saying "I think both sides manifested a determination to try and understand each other and try and converge our positions.” Speaking on the importance of meeting with Putin in person, Biden said "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." Later on he added "It was important to meet in person so there could be no mistake about or misrepresentations about what I wanted to communicate.”
Going into what CNN’s Kevin Liptak and Phil Mattingly described as the highest-stakes meeting of Biden’s career, the US President established that the recent cyber-attacks waged from inside Russia would be a principal topic. During the summit he presented Putin with “a list, 16 specific entities defined as critical infrastructure under U.S. policy, from the energy sector to water system,” which were off limits for cyberattacks, and said that if Russia does not take responsibility in cracking down on recent instances of cybercrime, Putin was told that the United States has “significant cyber capability" to respond with. At the meeting, Biden advised his Russian counterpart that the two countries “need to have some basic rules of the road that we can all abide by." As a possible solution, the two established that experts would be assigned to address growing concerns over cyberattacks originating in Russia.
American opponents of Putin’s regime worried that Biden meeting with him so early into the presidential term would elevate Putin’s image too much, and it is said that Biden aides chose not to hold a joint press conference for this reason; alternatively, each president held an individual press conference. At Biden’s, he addressed his diplomatic approach towards Russia by saying "I told President Putin my agenda is not against Russia or anybody else. It's for the American people.” Further adding to this rhetoric, Biden declared that when addressing human rights violations "It's not about just going after Russia when they violate human rights, it's about who we (the US) are.” On the topic of election interference, Biden said “He (Putin) knows there are consequences. He knows I will take action.” Lastly, Biden ensured that he is “not going to walk away,” in regards to bringing detained Americans in Russia home, especially after the families of US Marine Trevor Reed and Paul Whelan asked him to secure their loved ones’ release.
Following the summit, the two leaders released a joint statement expressing their commitment to nuclear arms control, saying “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” and announced that two nations will engage in “bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue” soon. For the time being, only one arms control treaty, New START, is in place between Moscow and Washington, since former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty. Adding to the list of accomplishments to come out of the summit, Biden and Putin decided that each country’s ambassadors would return to their posts, indicating the possibility of improved relations between the nuclear powers following a period of prolonged tension. While there was no sign of agreement reached over the issue of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s freedom, Biden told Putin that there would be “devastating consequences,” if Navalny died in Prison.
Overall, the summit can be deemed successful, since it allowed the leaders of two global powers to establish areas in which they want to cooperate, return ambassadors to their diplomatic posts, and clear the air after a period of tense relations. Addressing this, Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said “It seems to me that the positive results of the American summit in Geneva give us a fresh opportunity to stabilize relations of the two nations.” However, whether these advancements will lead to concrete change or simply fade away is yet to be determined in the coming years of Biden’s term.
Further reading and sources consulted
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/06/putin-biden-post-afghanistan-498311
https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/biden-putin-meeting-geneva-updates-intl/index.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/16/politics/president-biden-president-putin-meeting/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/16/biden-putin-trump-summit/
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