NEW YORK (Dagbladet): Biden’s spokesperson, Jen Psaki, announced on Tuesday that Biden and Putin will meet in the Swiss city of Geneva on June 16.
– Leaders must discuss all pressing topics. We want to rebuild predictability and stability in US-Russia relations, the White House said in a statement.
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“We plan to discuss the current situation and the possibilities for the development of the Russian-American relationship, the problems of strategic stability, as well as topics on the international agenda including the fight against the pandemic and resolution of regional conflicts,” the Kremlin said in a statement. CNN.
The meeting will be part of Biden’s very first trip abroad as president. On 14 June, he will attend a NATO summit in Brussels.
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Rewards
But not everyone thinks it is right for Biden to meet Putin. The harshest critic is Republican Senator Ben Sasse.
– We reward Putin with a summit? Putin imprisoned Alexei Navalny, and his puppet Alexander Lukashenko hijacked a plane to get hold of Roman Protasevch. Instead of treating Putin like a gangster, who fears his own people, we give him the highly valued Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and legitimize his actions with a summit. This is weak, writes Ben Sasse in one statement.
“Wondering if Putin will arrive with a birthday cake along with the multi-billion dollar gift that Biden gave him by dropping sanctions on Nord Stream 2,” Republican Senator Ted Cruz wrote on Twitter.
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Former world chess champion and Putin critic Gerry Kasparov is also very critical.
– The only value of the meeting is to give Putin an opportunity to show that he is still the great boss, still welcome as an equal with the world’s top democratic leaders. What does the United States or Biden get out of it, when they know from experience that it will only make Putin’s behavior worse? Kasparov writes Twitter.
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– How diplomacy works
Psaki was asked about the criticism during a press conference in the White House.
– This is how diplomacy works. We do not just meet people when we agree. It is actually important to meet leaders when we have many disagreements, as we have with Russian leaders, says Psaki.
The meeting is expected to be less friendly than the meeting between Putin and then President Donald Trump in Helsinki in July 2018, writes The Hill.
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US intelligence concluded that Russia interfered in the US presidential election in 2016, but in the meeting with Putin, Trump said publicly that he doubted this.
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Have met before
This will be Biden’s first meeting with Putin since he became president. He has met Putin twice before when he was vice president of Barack Obama.
“I do not think you have a soul,” Biden told Putin during a meeting in 2011, according to CNN.
In March this year, Biden described Putin as a “killer” and that the Russian president will “pay a price” for his attempts to destroy the US election in 2020. Russia responded by recalling its ambassador to the US for the first time in 20 years. year.
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The situation in Ukraine and Russia’s interference in US elections – by 2020 at the latest, according to US intelligence – has created a bad relationship between Russia and the United States. Biden now hopes to create a clear communication channel with Putin to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Putin has so far signaled that he is willing to do this, even though the United States has at the same time introduced new sanctions to punish Russia for electoral influence and the role in a massive hacker attack on US government institutions.
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