The Putin-Biden summit: The bear and the eagle did not fight

The Russia-US summit, which took place in Geneva on June 16, went exactly as almost all experts predicted — there were no breakthroughs at all. In fact, it was difficult to expect something like that given the level of contradictions that exists between the parties. At the same time, the Biden-Putin summit was not fruitless either.

What Putin and Biden could achieve

The most tangible outcome of the talks is the decision to return Russian and US ambassadors to their work places in Washington and Moscow, respectively. Clearly, that is something that one does not need to hold the summit of the two presidents for. At the same time, it is not clear yet what will happen to the Russian diplomatic property in the United States and how soon the visa problems are going to be resolved.

In addition, the presidents declared the need to continue negotiations on strategic offensive weapons and agree on the principles of interaction in cyberspace.

At the end of the summit, a joint communique was adopted, albeit it was quite short and concerned only one issue — strategic stability.

What happens next? The parties gave themselves time to try to make progress in negotiations at least on some of the topics. The Americans say that it would take up to six months to see prospects for reaching agreements between the two countries.

According to Vladimir Dzhabarov, First Deputy Head of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, the Putin-Biden meeting was very positive.

"Most importantly, no failure happened. The parties agreed to begin processes to restore relations in various fields. First of all, diplomatic relations and consular visa services will be fully restored, which, by the way, has recently become a very serious problem. The parties will kick off cooperation through foreign ministries on disarmament issues and preparation of a new START treaty — they will work together on all acute issues," the senator told Pravda. Ru.

"It is very interesting that the parties showed mutual respect for each other. Our president is always very correct and highly restrained. Biden behaved very seriously, he was very balanced, which, by the way, our president noticed. I think it was a complete surprise for many "hawks", especially in Washington," said Vladimir Dzhabarov.

According to political scientist Leonid Krutakov, the main outcome of the meeting was the fact that the summit took place.

"The main outcome of the meeting is that Putin and Biden could meet at all. The meeting took place after an avalanche of accusations against Russia and Putin personally. The fact of the negotiations between the presidents of Russia and the United States became the main accusation that Biden could face in the US media. Both the American and the Western society in general were expecting that Russia should be forced on its knees, that Putin must leave. None of that happened," the political analyst told Pravda. Ru.