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The leaders of the two superpowers meet Wednesday at a Swiss villa in Geneva.
Last Updated: June 15, 2021, 7:31 PM ET
President Joe Biden holds a high-stakes summit with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday at what the leaders agree is a “low point” in the U.S.-Russia relationship.
The two men will face off inside an 18th-century Swiss villa in Geneva, situated alongside a lake in the middle of the Parc de la Grange. The fifth American president to sit down with Putin, Biden has spoken with him and met him before, in 2016.
Having called Putin a “killer” and saying he’s told him before he has no “soul,” Biden told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega on Monday that he also recalled the Russian leader as being “bright” and “tough.”
“And I have found that he is a — as they say, when you used to play ball — a worthy adversary,” he said.
Amid all the high-level shadow boxing setting up President Joe Biden’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden has added a new wrinkle — one that amounts to a test for himself that awaits him back home.
Biden has cast this moment in the world community in broad terms for the United States — a chance to assert the power of democratic nations in the face of challenges from China and Russia in particular. Asked Monday what he is telling allies who may be worried about any American slide toward autocracy, Biden again went big.
“What I’m saying to them is, watch me,” Biden said. “That’s why it’s so important that I succeed in my agenda.”
Biden was nonchalant in his condemnation of what he called the “phony populism” of former President Donald Trump. Speaking about Republicans, he flatly observed that “the Trump wing of the party is the bulk of the party, but it makes up a significant minority of the American people.”
Still, just hours earlier, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell served notice that his brand of hardball is still going to be played, with a warning about what Republican Senate control would mean for any Supreme Court vacancy under a Democratic presidency.
McConnell is objecting to congressional scrutiny of Trump-era Justice Department strategies, just like he did to the proposed Jan. 6 commission. And it’s still far from clear whether any infrastructure or climate-change legislation can pass with Republican support, to say nothing of the prospects for tax reform.
Asked about Putin’s laughing response to Biden’s assertion that he is a killer, Biden said his message back would be that he is laughing as well. The world now is watching — and will still be when Biden and Putin are both back home.
–ABC News Political Director Rick Klein
Biden met with Swiss President Guy Parmelin and Foreign Minister Ignzio Cassis Tuesday and, according to a White House readout, Biden thanked the country for hosting the U.S. -Russia summit and “expressed appreciation for Switzerland’s unique historical role providing a neutral ground for diplomacy and negotiations.”
Biden and the leaders also talked about the strong relationships between the U.S. and Switzerland on many fronts. They also discussed Switzerland’s role as the U.S. protecting power in Iran for 40 years and their contributions to the global COVID response effort.
-ABC News’ Molly Nagle
The high-stakes meeting between Biden and Putin comes on the heels of a summit with NATO leaders in Belgium’s capital, another first for Biden as U.S. president.
“What I’ll convey to President Putin is that I’m not looking for conflict with Russia but that we will respond if Russia continues its harmful activities,” Biden said at a press conference in Brussels. “And we will not fail to defend the trans-Atlantic alliance or stand up for democratic values.”
Biden said not a single NATO leader expressed reservations about him meeting with Putin but rather have “thanked” him for doing it.
“I had discussions with them about — in the open — about what they thought was important from their perspective and what they thought was not important,” he said.
Biden and Putin’s meeting is slated to begin on Wednesday around 7 a.m. ET and last four to five hours total, with multiple sessions.
The two leaders will first take part in a small session, joined by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, before taking part in a larger working session.
The two leaders are also expected to host dueling, solo press conferences following the summit.
Biden said they weren’t holding a joint news conference, as Trump did with Putin, because he didn’t want the focus to be on talking time or body language. Doing it this way leaves Putin with less of an opportunity to embarrass the American president, as he’s historically tried to do.
“I think the best way to deal with this is for he and I to meet, he and I to have our discussion,” Biden said Sunday in England, on another leg of his first trip as president. “I don’t want to get into being diverted by, did they shake hands, who talked the most and the rest.”
