Sending a bearish signal for Wednesday’s summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an aggressive preview interview to NBC News, denying cyber-hacking and portraying suspects in the Capitol riot as political prisoners.
Why it matters: This is looking like the rare head of state sit-down where no amount of diplomatic fluff can paper over the gulf between the two countries.
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Zoom out: Both President Biden and Putin say U.S.-Russia relations are at their worst levels in years.
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In a measure of White House caution, Biden plans a solo news conference after the Geneva meeting, rather than a joint appearance with Putin.
Biden, at a press conference on Monday at the NATO summit in Brussels, said Putin is “bright, he’s tough, and I have found that he is … a worthy adversary.”
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But Biden said that if the Russian “chooses not to cooperate, and acts in a way that he has in the past relative to cybersecurity and some other activities … we will respond in kind.”
Putin, who sat down with NBC’s Keir Simmons in Moscow, made a string of antagonistic assertions.
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On ransomware attacks: “[W]here is the evidence? Where is proof? … Russia has nothing to do with it.”
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Putin refused to guarantee that opposition leader Alexei Navalny would leave prison alive: “[T]hat is something that the administration of the specific prison or penitentiary establishment is responsible for.”
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When the reporter noted that Putin wasn’t saying Navalny’s name, the president responded: “For me, he [is] one of the citizens of the Russian Federation who has been found guilty by a court of law and is in prison. There are many citizens like that.”
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On the Capitol insurrectionists: “[T]hey’re looking at jail time … And they came to the Congress with political demands. Isn’t that persecution for political opinions?”
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