The meeting between U.S. president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin in Geneva started cordially enough. A quick handshake, toothy smiles for the cameras, and some standard words of diplomacy.
‘I would like to thank you for the initiative to meet today,’ a slouching Putin told an attentive Biden. ‘Still, U.S.-Russian relations have accumulated a lot of issues that require a meeting at the highest level, and I hope that our meeting will be productive.’
Putin’s words were something of an understatement. U.S.-Russia relations are scraping the bottom of the barrel and may very well be at their lowest point since the early 1980s, when Washington and Moscow were turning Europe into a parking lot for intermediate-range missiles.
While no subject was off-limits today, 99 per cent of the issues and grievances Biden and Putin brought with them (cyberattacks, computer hacks, sanctions, the mobilisation of troops near Ukraine’s border, the squashing of anti-Kremlin dissent on Russian soil) were left unresolved.
Biden can’t pressure Putin into altering his worldview anymore than Putin can sweet-talk Biden into altering his
This was anything but surprising.
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