US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet June 16 in Geneva for talks that promise to be a fraught amid continuing disputes over allegations of spying, hacking, election meddling, Russian incursions into Ukraine and human rights issues.
US President Joe Biden used the G7 summit in the English seaside resort of Carbis Bay to argue that the world’s richest democracies now faced an existential contest with “autocrats” that would define the 21st Century.
Biden said on Sunday that “autocrat” Vladimir Putin was right to describe UR-Russian relations as being at their lowest point in years, though he suggested that Russia might be weaker than it seemed and that Moscow had overreached in the Middle East.
The US president cast Russia – whose economy is 13 times smaller than the United States – as engaging in unacceptable behaviour on a range of fronts but also pointed to Russia’s own “dilemmas”, including its post-Soviet economic collapse, what he called its overreach in Syria and persistent problems with taming Covid-19 infections.
“Russia has its own dilemmas, dealing with its economy, dealing with Covid and dealing with – not only the United States and Europe writ large – and in the Middle East,” he said.
“Russia has engaged in activities which we believe are contrary to international norms, but they have also bitten off some real problems, that they’re going to have trouble chewing on,” Biden said.
He also said that Putin was right to describe relations as being at a low: “He’s right, it’s a low point.”
Biden said he told Putin before being elected that he would look at whether the Russian leader had been involved in trying to interfere with the US election.
“I checked it out, so I had access to all the intelligence – he was engaged in those activities,” Biden said…..read more
Source: France24
