Biden and Putin hold high-stakes Geneva summit

By Peter Wilkinson, Lauren Said-Moorhouse, Aditi Sangal, Melissa Macaya, Nick Thompson, Meg Wagner, Melissa Mahtani and Veronica Rocha, CNN

Updated 0841 GMT (1641 HKT) June 17, 2021
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11:19 a.m. ET, June 16, 2021

Here's what to expect at Biden and Putin's summit today, according to a US national security official

People walk under Russian and American flags on a bridge in the city center prior to a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 15, in Geneva, Switzerland.
People walk under Russian and American flags on a bridge in the city center prior to a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 15, in Geneva, Switzerland. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The National Security Council’s Senior Director for Russia, Eric Green, laid out the planned agenda for the Biden-Putin summit earlier this month, emphasizing that the main goal for the meeting is to establish “very clear lines of communication” with Russia “starting at the presidential level.”��

Green said the agenda “will cover the waterfront,” to include future arms control arrangements, the recent ransomware attacks that the US believes have been carried out by criminal groups in Russia, climate change, and the Kremlin-imposed restrictions on the US diplomatic presence in Russia.

Biden and his aides will also “be advocating on behalf of” the American citizens currently detained by Russia, Green said, and will reaffirm the US commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty. The White House also wants to discuss areas of mutual interest in Iran, North Korea, Syria, Afghanistan and the Arctic, Green said.

“We are not interested in a reset nor do we want escalation with Russia,” Green said, adding that “this is a much different Russia” than it was back in the era of the Barack Obama-led reset in 2009. 

But Green said the administration also recognizes that some things have not changed since 2009, specifically the fact that Russia still has one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals. The country is also still a permanent member of the UN Security Council, “which means, whether we like it or not, we have to work with them on certain core challenges out there in the world,” Green said. 

 “But we have no illusions about what is happening inside Russia and we don’t see a lot of opportunities for real constructive engagement in a lot of areas,” he added.  

CNN's Kevin Liptak, Natasha Bertrand, Arlette Saenz and Betsy Klein contributed reporting to this post. 

4:14 p.m. ET, June 16, 2021

Biden puts decades of experience to the test in high-stakes meeting with Putin

From CNN's Kevin Liptak and Phil Mattingly in Geneva

President Joe Biden arrives for the United States-European Union Summit at the European Council in Brussels on June 15.
President Joe Biden arrives for the United States-European Union Summit at the European Council in Brussels on June 15. Patrick Semansky/AP

US President Joe Biden convenes the highest-stakes talks of his long career Wednesday when he joins Russia's Vladimir Putin for a summit, an encounter set to test his decades of experience on the world stage and lay down an early marker of his diplomatic skills.

Depending on its outcome, the meeting could shadow Biden as he returns home to help revive his domestic agenda. He'll arrive to the 18th-century villa on Lake Geneva, a stunning summit site, bolstered by support from western allies he spent the past week consulting ahead of his face-to-face with the Russian President.

In Biden's telling, those leaders all backed him in his decision to meet Putin now, in the first six months of his presidency, before he's had a chance to fully formulate a Russia strategy.

"He's bright, he's tough, and I've found that he is, as they say when I used to play ball, a worthy adversary," Biden told reporters of Putin on Monday during a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, where he solicited advice from fellow leaders with experience dealing with Putin.

Still, skepticism abounds that anything can be accomplished. At its worse, Biden's summit could provide elevated stature to a leader who appears intent on testing the limits of international norms and the willingness of the West to respond.

Expectations for the summit are also low among American officials, who have said since the encounter was first announced they didn't think anything concrete would emerge from it.

Read more about the meeting here.