Geneva, (Asian independent) The Presidents of the US and Russia have praised their talks in Geneva but have made little concrete progress at the first such meeting since 2018.
Disagreements were stated, said US President Joe Biden, but not in a hyperbolic way, and he said Russia did not want a new Cold War, the BBC reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Biden was an experienced statesman and the two “spoke the same language”.
The talks lasted four hours, less time than was scheduled.
Biden said that they did not need to spend more time talking and there was now a genuine prospect to improve relations with Russia.
The two sides agreed to begin a dialogue on nuclear arms control. They also said that they would return ambassadors to each other’s capitals – the envoys were mutually withdrawn for consultations in March, after the US accused Russia of meddling in the 2020 presidential election.
However, there was little sign of agreement on other issues, including cyber-security, Ukraine and the fate of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is currently serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence in a penal colony.
Biden said that there would be “devastating consequences” for Russia if Navalny died in prison.
Before the summit, both sides said relations were at rock bottom.
Putin that hinted at a possible deal on exchanging prisoners, saying he believed compromises could be found.
On cyber-attacks, Putin brushed away accusations of Russian responsibility, saying that most cyber-attacks in Russia originated from the US.
Biden said that he told Putin that critical infrastructure, such as water or energy, must be “off-limits” to hacking or other attacks.
The two sides differed sharply on human rights, including the right to protest.
Putin dismissed the US concerns about Alexei Navalny, who recently undertook a 24-day hunger strike.
He said that Navalny ignored the law and knew that he would face imprisonment when he returned to Russia after having sought medical treatment in Germany. Navalny says he was poisoned with a nerve agent on Putin’s orders – an accusation Putin denies.
He said that Russia did not want disturbances on its territory comparable to the Capitol riots or the Black Lives Matter movement.
Biden dismissed Putin’s comments about Black Lives Matter as “ridiculous”, and said human rights would “always be on the table”.
Asked why Russia would want to co-operate with the US, Biden said that it was “in a very, very difficult spot right now”.
“They are being squeezed by China. They want desperately to remain a major power,” he told reporters, shortly before leaving Geneva.
