Russia-US summit not about deliverables but communicating views: White House

The upcoming summit between the United States President Joe Biden and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin next week in Geneva is about communicating Washington’s views to Moscow instead of deliverables, said White House on Monday. Biden and Putin are scheduled to meet in Geneva on June 16 even as bilateral ties between both the nations have suffered a blow with the latest cyberattacks in the US linked to Russia. The summit will follow the Group of Seven (G7) nations summit in the UK, a NATO meeting and also the US-European Union Summit in Brussels. When US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was asked about a specific deliverable with the Biden-Putin summit, he said the meeting is about expressing views.

Sullivan told the reporters at White House on June 7, “We don’t think in terms of U.S.-Russia summits as being about deliverables.  Because if you’re going to wait for really significant deliverables, you could be waiting a long time, conceivably.”

“So what we need to think about this summit as doing is fundamentally giving us an opportunity to communicate from our president to their president what American intentions and capabilities are and to hearing the same from their side. That has value in and of itself,” he added.

‘Hard to find a better context for meeting’

Further elaborating about the timing of the Biden-Putin summit, Sullivan said, “in terms of the timing, it is hard from our perspective to find a better context for a meeting with the Russian president than after time spent with the world’s leading market economies — the G7 — plus India, South Korea, Australia, and South Africa” along with NATO and US-EU meet. US National Security Adviser added, “That, from our perspective, is the right context within which to engage Russia.”

Sullivan said, “And as far as whether it comes too early in his presidency if you think about what we’ve dealt with from the outset on Russia, it’s been a busy time: We’ve extended the New START agreement.  We’ve imposed costs for election interference and for SolarWinds.  We’ve dealt with a Russian buildup on the Ukraine border.”

“And, of course, we are contending with a range of issues in the cyber and ransomware domain.  So, we feel that it is an effective and appropriate context and time period for us to have this summit,” he added.

IMAGE: AP