President Joe Biden pressed Vladimir Putin at their summit Wednesday to replace the combustible US-Russian stand-off with a more “predictable” relationship between “two great powers” capable of agreeing to disagree.
The two leaders wrapped up their first summit shortly after 5 pm (1500 GMT), after around three-and-a-half hours of meetings at an elegant villa in Geneva.
At the start early Wednesday afternoon, they shook hands, striking cautiously positive notes.
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“It’s always better to meet face to face,” he told Putin as they met in the villa’s library, with a globe placed between them.
Putin noted that “a lot of issues” need addressing “at the highest level” and that he hoped the meeting would be “productive”.
The reference to the United States and Russia as “two great powers” was sure to please the Kremlin leader, who has dominated his country for two decades, infuriating the West with invasions of Ukraine and Georgia, and often brutal crushing of political dissent.
Expectations were low for anything more than a modest thaw in relations.
The choice of Geneva recalled the Cold War summit between US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the Swiss city in 1985.
But in contrast with 1985, tensions are less about strategic nuclear weapons and competing ideologies than what the Biden administration sees as an increasingly rogue regime.
Putin came to the summit arguing that Moscow is simply challenging US hegemony — part of a bid to promote a so-called “multi-polar” world that has seen Russia draw close with the US’s arguably even more powerful adversary China.
– ‘Worthy adversary’ –
While in Brussels, he said he would detail his “red lines.”
However, Biden, who had previously characterised Putin as a “killer”, upgraded the Russian leader to “worthy adversary”.
Officials point to the recent extension of the New START nuclear arms limitation treaty as an example of successful diplomacy.
The US side clearly wanted to avoid the optics of having Biden sharing that kind of platform with the Russian president.
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