U.S. President Joe Biden will meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for the first time as president in the city of Geneva, Switzerland. While no great progress is expected, the parties believe the summit may help set some boundaries in the historically tense relationship of the world’s largest nuclear powers. The Biden administration seeks with this summit to achieve a more stable and predictable relationship with Russia. For his part, the Russian president seeks to present the country as a world power. The truth is that relations between the parties have been in a sort of downward spiral since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
The expectation from Moscow is that President Biden will have a tougher stance on Russia than the Trump administration was, so the Kremlin sees it as a positive sign that a summit is being held so early in the term of the person who took office on January 20. The Kremlin reacted with outrage after Biden agreed in a March interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that Putin is a “murderer.” Putin first challenged Biden to a public debate, and when Biden later proposed a summit, the Kremlin described the White House as trying to make up for the comment. Putin and Biden met personally in 2011, when the Pennsylvania native was serving as vice president under the Obama Administration. However, the months leading up to this Wednesday have been tense. In an interview with ABC News, Biden spoke about his country’s intelligence service report suggesting that Putin authorized a campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. In that context, he referred to the Kremlin leader as a “murderer,” an accusation unprecedented in the countries’ history.
The Russian president’s response was blunt: “You have to be one to recognize the other,” also challenging the Head of the White House to a live debate. Based on this, Russia called for consultations with its ambassador to the United States seeking to avoid the “irreversible deterioration” of ties between the two countries. Ambassador Anatoli Antonov was summoned to the marked “dead end” in which relations with the United States find themselves, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
