Biden says NATO allies ‘thanked me’ for agreeing to sit down with Vladimir Putin

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President Joe Biden on Monday called Russian President Vladimir Putin a ‘worthy adversary’ ahead of their summit in Geneva – and declined to label him a ‘killer’ when asked to repeat a label he accepted in the past.

Instead, Biden called Putin ‘bright’ and ‘tough’ – but vowed that if Russia should continue its current posture on cybersecurity other issues the U.S ‘will respond in kind.’

Biden said in Brussels that allied leaders do not consider his summit meeting with Putin any kind of reward – and that fellow heads of state have thanked him for sitting down with the strongman. 

Speaking to reporters after a day of meetings with NATO alliance members, Biden said leaders were on board with his decision to sit down with the head of a nation he variously called an adversary or a potential one.

He has been making a point of soliciting their views on what he should say when he finally gets together with Putin, who has confounded numerous U.S. presidents and with whom he has met before, Wednesday.

‘They thanked me for being willing to talk with them about the meeting,’ Biden said, fielding a handful of questions after making reporters wait two hours for a delayed press conference.

He said there was consensus among ‘Every single one that spoke.’ They thanked him ‘for meeting with Putin now.’ He said fellow leaders thought it was ‘thoroughly appropriate’ that he do so. Biden rejected the supposition of a question that it was a reward for Putin to meet him so early in his term.

‘I’m going to make clear to President Putin that there are areas we can cooperate if he chooses,’ Biden said. 

‘If he chooses not to cooperate and acts in a way that he has in the past,’ Biden said, ‘then we will respond. We will respond in kind.’

But he offered a caveat. ‘There need not be. We should decide where it’s in our mutual interests and the interests of the world to cooperate,’ he said. 

Biden also took a question over what it would mean if Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were to die in prison, having been sentenced after a poison attempt on his life with a nerve agent.

‘Navalny’s death would be another indication of Russia has little or no intention of abiding by basic fundamental human rights. It would be a tragedy. It would do nothing but hurt his relationships with the rest of the world in my view. And with me.’ 

Biden’s musings came during back-and-forth where he once again selected reporters to call on from a list written on a white card that he carried with him. 

Several of the questions were about Putin. Another dealt with Ukraine, and whether the nation fighting a war with Russia would never get into the alliance due to that status. 

Biden said that wasn’t the case, but that Ukraine had to meet criteria spelled out for membership. 

One topic that didn’t come up was Turkey, after Biden had a long meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that was followed by a lengthy delay with nothing public on Biden’s schedule.  

When asked if he would repeat his assertion that Putin was a ‘killer’ – a notion Putin laughed at in a recent interview – Biden chose not to repeat the charge that caused an uproar early in his term. 

Rather than use an incendiary label two days before their meeting, Biden came up with a word salad response, following a lengthy pause. 

‘The answer is, I believe he has in the past, essentially, acknowledged that he was, or certain things, that he would do or did do.’

Biden was reluctant to divulge more of what he would say to Putin.

‘I’ve been doing this a long time. The last thing anyone would do is negotiate in front of the world press as to how you’re going to approach a critical meeting with another adversary and/or someone who could be an adversary,’ Biden said.

‘But I will tell you this: I’m going to make clear to President Putin that there are areas where we can cooperate if he chooses. And if he chooses not to cooperate and acts in a way that he has in the past relative to cybersecurity and some other activities, then we will respond. We will respond in kind.’

‘We should decide where it’s in our mutual interest and the interest of the world to cooperate, and see if we could do that,’ he said.

He said of Putin: ‘He’s bright, he’s tough, and I have found that he is, as they say when I used to play ball, a worthy adversary.’ 

Biden started his press conference more that two hours after it was scheduled to begin after a long day of preparing for Wednesday’s meeting with Putin, a formal NATO meeting, and individual meetings with Eastern European leaders. 

He acknowledged his tardiness but didn’t explain it. ‘Folks I know it’s after 9:30 pm and I’m still at NATO. You’re all excited about that I know,’ he said. 

The NATO plenary session earlier in the day ran over an hour late and his meeting with the Turkish president went long. 

He also was asked if he could reassure transatlantic allies after Trump’s ‘America First’ policies given the former president’s vocal group of supporters who still play a role in American Republican politics.

Biden downplayed Trump’s influence on American politics. ‘I think it’s appropriate to say the Republican Party is vastly diminished in numbers. The leadership of the Republican Party is fractured. And the Trump wing of the party is the bulk of the party, but it makes up a significant minority of the American people,’ he said. 

Biden, on his way out of NATO headquarters, stopped to visit the 9/11 memorial, a piece of the World Trade Center, that sits on the lawn outside the main building.

He walked out alone to see the monument to the biggest terrorist attack in American history. He read the plaque and then stepped up to the piece of steel from the WTC, touched it briefly as the sun set behind him, and then stepped back in front of the plaque to gather his thoughts.

The visit was part of Biden’s effort to reaffirm America’s commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter. Donald Trump refused to reaffirm Article 5 – which says when one member of the alliance is attacked, it is treated as if all members were attacked.

Biden, during his time at NATO, pointed out repeatedly that NATO invoked Article 5 on the behalf of the United States in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

‘Remember what happened on 9/11. We were attacked. NATO immediately supported us,’ he said.

Biden spoke hours after Putin continued to try to pick apart U.S. claims on a media tour in advance of his summit with President Biden – denying in an interview airing Monday that Russia engaged in cyber attacks and saying there was no proof it interfered in U.S. elections. 

‘Where is the evidence? Where is proof? It’s becoming farcical,’ Putin said in a sit-down interview with NBC’s Keir Simmons in Moscow.

‘We have been accused of all kinds of things – election interference, cyberattacks and so on and so forth – and not once, not once, not one time, did they bother to produce any kind of evidence or proof, just unfounded accusations,’ he told the network’s Kier Simmons.

‘I’m surprised that we have not yet been accused of – provoking the Black Lives Matter movement. That would have been a good line of attack. But …’ Putin said, ridiculing the attack. 

Then he waded further into U.S. domestic politics, saying: ‘We have always treated with understanding the fight of African Americans for their rights,’ but said he couldn’t approve of any ‘extreme’ actions associated with the movement.

Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team issued detailed indictments for Russian intelligence operatives accused of 2016 election interference. But Russia didn’t hand over the alleged hackers, and they have not stood trial.  

The U.S. government has said Russia may be housing cyber hackers who carried out the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, but has not said it was a government operation.

U.S. intelligence does assess that Russia interfered in the 2016 and 2020 elections.  

Putin’s comments come as Biden kicked off the NATO summit in Brussels by saying Russia and China had not acted ‘in a way that is consistent with what we had hoped.’

Putin once again sought to undermine a U.S. push the Kremlin to respect press freedoms and allow a sphere for political opponents to exist – by bringing up U.S. prosecution of rioters who stormed the Capitol Jan. 6th.  

Putin, who is to meet President Joe Biden at a summit Wednesday, has suggested that the hundreds of people arrested for rioting at the U.S. Capitol are being subjected to ‘persecution for political opinions.’ 

Charging documents reveal many of those who have been arrested were carrying sticks and poles, attacked police officers, or broke through windows to enter the seat of legislative power. 

‘We have a saying: “Don’t be mad at the mirror if you are ugly,”‘ Putin said. 

‘It has nothing to do with you personally. But if somebody blames us for something, what I say is, why don’t you look at yourselves? You will see yourselves in the mirror, not us.’

Putin is likely to come under strong criticism from Biden at their meeting in Geneva for moves against his political opponents in Russia, particularly the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the detention of thousands of demonstrators protesting his arrest, and the outlawing of Navalny´s organizations as extremist.

Anticipating that Biden will raise issues of human rights and the jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Putin said: ‘You are presenting it as dissent and intolerance towards dissent in Russia. We view it completely differently.’ 

He then pointed to the Jan. 6 unrest in Washington when protesters barged into the Capitol to try to halt the count of electoral votes to certify Biden´s election victory over Donald Trump.

‘Do you know that 450 individuals were arrested after entering the Congress? … They came there with political demands,’ he said.

Putin also reiterated denials that the Kremlin was behind last year’s poisoning of Navalny with a nerve agent that nearly killed him.

‘We don’t have this kind of habit, of assassinating anybody,’ Putin said.

‘Did you order the assassination of the woman who walked into the Congress and who was shot and killed by a policeman?’ Putin said, referring to Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to climb through a window that led to the House floor.

In April, the United States announced the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats and new sanctions connected to the so-called SolarWinds cyberattack in which several U.S. government branches experienced data breaches. U.S. officials blamed the Russian foreign intelligence service.

In May, Microsoft officials said the foreign intelligence service appeared to be linked to an attack on a company providing services to the U.S. Agency for International Development.