GENEVA — US President Joe Biden shook hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in Geneva ahead of a summit, Reuters TV footage showed.
Biden and Putin shook hands and then entered the villa where the summit is due to take place after appearing at the entrance festooned with US, Swiss,
Putin said he hoped the meeting with Biden would be productive.
“Mr President, I’d like to thank you for your initiative to meet today,” Putin said, sitting next to Biden and accompanied by the two countries’ foreign ministers.
Biden said the two leaders would try to determine areas of cooperation and mutual interest.
“It is always better to meet face to face,” Biden said.
Biden and Putin face off on Wednesday in their first meeting since Biden took office, with wide disagreements likely and expectations low for any breakthroughs.
Both have said they hope their talks in a stately lakeside Geneva villa can lead to more stable and predictable relations, even though they remain at odds over everything from arms control and cyber-hacking to election interference and Ukraine.
“We’re not expecting a big set of deliverables out of this meeting,” a senior US official told reporters aboard Air Force One as Biden flew to Geneva.
“I’m not sure that any agreements will be reached,” said Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov.
Relations have deteriorated for years, notably with Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, its 2015 intervention in Syria and US charges – denied by Moscow – of its meddling in the 2016 election that brought Donald Trump to the White House.
They sank further in March when Biden said he thought Putin was a “killer,” prompting Russia to recall its ambassador to Washington for consultations. The United States recalled its ambassador in April. Neither has since returned.
The senior US official said the United States aimed for a set of “taskings” – Washington jargon for assigning aides to work on specific issues – “about areas where working together can advance our national interests and make the world safer.”
Arms control is one domain where progress has historically been possible despite wider agreements.
In February, Russia and the United States extended for five years the New START treaty, which caps their deployed strategic nuclear warheads and limits the land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.
The senior US official said Biden would also define areas of vital national interest where Russian misconduct would bring a response. Biden signed an executive order in April giving Washington wide latitude to impose sanctions on Moscow.
Vladimir Frolov, a former Russian diplomat, told Reuters Putin wanted respectful ties and to be treated like members of the Soviet Politburo were in the 1960s-1980s, with “a symbolic recognition of Russia’s geopolitical parity with the US”
Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, set the bar for Wednesday’s talks low.
“The principal takeaway, in the positive sense, from the Geneva meeting would be making sure that the United States and Russia did not come to blows physically, so that a military collision is averted,” he said.
