Wednesday’s high-profile summit in Geneva between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden yielded few tangible outcomes aside from some platitudes about the importance of repairing a broken relationship between the two countries. But perhaps the most significant accomplishment was, despite a relationship marked by posturing on both sides in recent years, an implied commitment to ratchet down the rhetoric and move away from tough-guy politics.
Biden doffed his suit jacket during his culminating press conference late in the day on a patio overlooking a serene lake and donned aviator sunglasses before taking a few additional shouted questions from the assembled reporters. It matched a casual style the president and his team had clearly focused on putting forward to describe the multiple hours the two leaders spent together.
“There were no threats,” he said at one point, noting that Putin had referenced Biden’s mother at least once during the two sessions, as the president himself often does. “I explained things on a personal basis: What happens if, for example.”
Biden was referencing ongoing sources of unrest, including a cyberattack on a major gas pipeline that seized it up last month before its executives paid a ransom to a hacker group believed to be based in Russia. He offered the kind of folksy approach that has defined his political style, saying he asked Putin how he would feel if access to Russian oil fields suddenly failed. And ultimately he appeared to rely on U.S.-led international condemnation to serve as a check on Russian meddling – an approach that Biden’s critics in Congress almost immediately seized upon as short-sighted but which the president himself defended.
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“It diminishes the standing of a country that is desperately trying to ensure it maintains its standing as a major world power,” Biden said.
He called on Russia to adhere to “international norms” despite its grievous human rights record, including jailing dissident Alexei Navalny and its heavy-handed military operations in places like Syria. But Biden also appeared eager to tout the potential for cooperation.
“He indicated he’s willing to, quote, help,” Biden added, referencing Afghanistan, Iran and other foreign policy areas where he said he found common ground with the Russian leader. He also said the U.S. and Russia agreed to form a working mechanism to address potential escalatory concerns, such as U.S. intelligence assessments that Moscow was at least tacitly involved in attempted election interference at least twice, and responsible for a string of devastating cyber attacks.
The American leader entered the high-profile summit with a great deal for which he needed to answer, including the increased acts of Russian aggression under his watch, and that of his predecessors. But the event was more important for Putin, who visibly relished an opportunity to appear on the world stage as a global statesman of an irreplaceable superpower – an image to which he aspires.
Putin predictably brushed aside probing questions from the American press about his crackdowns on civil liberties in Russia, the systematic arrest of political dissidents and his complicity in Russian aggression overseas, from covert operations in cyberspace to bold support for brutal autocrats in Belarus, Syria and Libya and his ongoing meddling in Ukraine.
The two leaders had virtually no hope of reaching a conclusion or consensus on any of the issues, as analysts have been saying in the weeks since Biden first accepted the offer.
“There’s no substitute for face-to-face dialogue between leaders, none,” Biden said, offering an explanation he’s repeatedly put forward in response to critics who say he’s needlessly bolstering Putin’s standing by engaging with him on a high-profile level. And after days spent clarifying his past characterization of Putin as a soulless killer, he added praise for the Russian leader: “We share a unique responsibility to manage the relationship between two powerful and proud countries.”
It was clear, perhaps most surprisingly from Putin, that at least in this forum they wished to appear more cordial with one another than prior statements had allowed.
“President Biden is an experienced statesman,” Putin said during his remarks through a translator. He even assessed Biden’s performance as superior to his predecessor, Donald Trump, who had a blustery and bellicose style and appeared comfortable in the company of autocrats like Putin. During the last summit between leaders of the two countries, Trump criticized his own country’s intelligence assessments and appeared to take at face value Putin’s denials of involvement in election interference.
But even then, Putin appeared unable to resist firing a rhetorical barb at Biden. When asked about Russia’s human rights record, Putin cited Black Lives Matter protests across the U.S. that turned violent, the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, CIA black sites and civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
“Who’s the killer now?” Putin concluded.
