Jul 6, 20216 min read

COLD PEACE: Bilateral Talks by Biden and Putin

The 46th President of the United States of America, serving his first term, and the four-time Russian President met as the head of their respective countries for the first time on June 16, 2021, in Geneva. The meeting with Vladimir Putin is Joe Biden’s first since taking office in January. The expectations were not much in terms of deliverables, given the strained relationship between the two nations, due to recent allegations of Russian interference in the election and in being a part of cyberattacks on the US. US-Russia relations being at their lowest in the last thirty years, the Russian Government has said that Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the US, had been called back to Moscow from Washington because relations with the US had reached a “blind alley”. This action was prompted by the interview where Biden agreed that Putin was a “killer”. As a reaction to this, even the United States of America called back their ambassador John Sullivan from Moscow.

Another factor that fuels the fire is the history between the two men leading the countries. Biden’s first encounter with the Russian President was during Putin’s first term in November 2001, when Biden himself was the chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After a rather pleasant press conference with President George Bush at the white house, Putin was driven to Capitol Hill to meet several other prominent lawmakers. However, things turned sour very quickly. Some legislators tried to bring up Russia’s expanding sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Ever since, Biden never found common ground with Russia on values like democracy and human rights. Biden even revealed that when he visited the Kremlin as Vice President in 2011, he told Putin that he “doesn’t have a soul”. He’s referred to Putin as a “KGB thug” and “killer”, among several others. Putin responded to his statements in March by suggesting that Biden was projecting and that “it takes one to know one” and challenged Biden to an “open direct discussion", which led to the meeting on June 16.

What do both sides have to gain from the meeting?

Given the clear unpleasant background between the two personalities and the heightened tensions between the two nations, it is significant to understand why both leaders had so much to gain from this meeting.

Let’s look at Putin’s angle first. One of Putin’s most pompous achievements as the Russian President was his revival of the Russian economy. In his first ten years, the economy had an average growth of seven per cent every year. Ever since it has stagnated at one per cent, and the pandemic has caused it to start shrinking as well. The price war in oil produced by the virus has also shown that Russia clearly cannot compete with the Middle East. This brings us to the second issue. Although Putin may have his Presidency secure till 2036, elections to the Russian Parliament (the Duma) are imminent. United Russia, a party loyal to Putin, holds 338 of 450 seats and cannot afford to see their numbers dwindle as it will expose the cracks in Putin’s stronghold over Russia.

Any slip-up would encourage supporters of Alexei Navalny to gain the upper hand. Navalny is an outspoken critic of Putin, who was poisoned in a Novichok nerve agent attack in August 2020. Within a month of his return to Russia from Berlin after recovery, he was sentenced to two years in jail. A meeting with the President of the US would help re-establish Russia’s status as a modern global superpower in two ways. It would not only help improve Putin’s image in Russia but would also make Russia look less hostile to the rest of the world. It would also help pave a path to improved economic relations, which it is in dire need of.

Biden certainly doesn’t suffer from dwindling support or an unstable government. His motivations instead rise from the simple fact that, as powerful as America is, it simply doesn’t have the might to fight two enormous battles at once. Given the current state of things, it’s pretty evident that China is a more prominent threat than Russia is, and it has to prioritize its battles. Unlike all the American Presidents in the past who used the G7/G8 to discuss Russia’s actions, Biden didn’t mention Russia even once in the G7 meet on 11th June. Instead, he focused on strengthening the western alliance against the Chinese. The G7 nations even issued a communique slamming China’s human rights records, quoting the Uighur detention in Xinjiang, the protests in Hong Kong, growing tensions in Taiwan and lack of transparency on COVID 19 issues. After assuming office in January, he even ended America’s support for Saudi’s war in Yemen, pulling back all of America’s troops from Afghanistan by September. All of this is in line with Biden’s aim of reorienting American foreign policy, being able to tackle the challenge posed by China more effectively. It only makes sense that Biden also establishes peace with Russia to ease the pressure.

The Biden-Putin Summit?

Now that the history between the two leaders and the need for this meeting on both sides has been explained, we can move on to the meeting. Vladimir Putin, who has a habit of arriving late – sometimes hours late – when meeting foreign leaders, arrived promptly at the Geneva lakeside villa. This was an encouraging sign for the atmosphere even before the meeting started. They briefly spoke to the media before the meeting began, where Biden said it was an opportunity for the “two great powers” to discuss matters face to face. Putin said he hoped for a “productive” meeting. The awkwardness in the room was rife as the two men barely ever made eye contact with one another. Then Biden and Putin had their one-on-one meet behind closed doors. After the meeting, Putin said the three hours long meeting with Biden was “constructive” and that there was “no hostility” during the talks that lasted nearly five hours. There were two solo post-meeting press conferences, with Putin first followed by Biden, where they made efforts to describe their meeting.

Putin acknowledged that Biden raised the issue of Alexei Navalny with him. He defended Navalny’s prison sentence and deflected further questions by pointing at the turmoil in the US using the Black Lives Matter protests and the Capitol insurrection as examples. Putin said he and Biden agreed to begin negotiations on nuclear talks to potentially replace the New START treaty limiting nuclear weapons after it expires in 2026. Talks with Moscow had broken off in 2014 in response to the Russian annexation of Crimea and resumed in 2017 but gained very little traction under the Trump administration. Putin also said that they’d agreed to return their ambassadors to their respective postings. However, as expected, Putin denied US allegations that the Russian government was involved in the cyberattacks on the US Colonial Pipeline and denied any sort of involvement in the US elections, which Biden said Russia and Putin “would pay a price for” back in March.

Biden described himself and Putin as leaders of two “powerful and proud” countries. Biden claimed that it was in America’s DNA to uphold human rights and said that he brought up the topic of Navalny and told Putin that Russia would face the consequences if anything happened to him in jail. Biden also acknowledged their discussion of the cyber attacks and shared a 16-element list with Putin, which contained critical infrastructure considered off-limits for cyberattacks. Biden also mentioned that although he didn’t “threaten” Putin throughout their meeting, he did emphasize that the US have significant cyber capabilities and will be forced to react if Russia or criminals in Russia continue to violate norms. He also claimed that the Russian officials acknowledged the potential of an American cyberattack on the Russian pipelines. He said there was an agreement for experts from Russia and the US to establish the guard rails for cybersecurity. When asked whether he trusts Putin, Biden responded by stating that this was more about self-interest and its verification rather than trust. He essentially said that he couldn’t be sure of Russia’s cooperation until he saw it happening.

Conclusion

There seems to be some sort of cooperation, at least on paper, as exhibited by the cordial, respectful and smooth nature of the meeting on 16th June. But to agree with what Biden said, we won’t know whether this meeting bore any fruit for a few months. It may be a show of cooperation and agreement from Putin to ease the pressure on him and as an opportunity for Biden to focus solely on China. Considering how far the US-Russian relationship has decayed, we don’t thoroughly know how long this cold peace will last and how long it will take before the two leaders go back to their ways of disagreement and distaste for one another.

Article by-

Ashwin Sarathi Krishnan

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COLD PEACE: Bilateral Talks by Biden and Putin

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