Biden, in contrast to predecessors, has maintained Putin skepticism – KIRO 7 Information Seattle

BRUSSELS – (AP) – President Joe Biden speaks often about what he sees as key to conducting effective foreign policy: building personal relationships.

But unlike his four recent White House predecessors, who struggled to forge some relationship with Vladimir Putin, Biden has made it clear that the virtue of merging a personal connection may have its limits when it comes to the Russian leader.

Biden, who will meet Putin face-to-face in Geneva on Wednesday, reiterated an anecdote about his last meeting with Putin 10 years ago when he served Vice President and Putin as Prime Minister. Putin had paused his presidency because the Russian constitution forbade a third term in a row, but was still considered Russia’s most powerful leader.

Biden recalled to biographer Evan Osnos that Putin showed him his ornate office in Moscow during that 2011 meeting. Biden recalled tapping Putin – a former KGB officer – that “it’s amazing what capitalism is going to do”.

Biden said he then turned and stood just inches from Putin and said, “Mr. Prime Minister, I look you in the eye and I don’t think you have a soul. “Biden said, Putin smiled and replied,” We understand each other. “

Biden’s comment was in part a blow to former President George W. Bush, who was ridiculed after his first meeting with Putin for claiming he had “looked the man in the eye” and “got a feel for his soul”. “But in repeating his decades-long exchanges with Putin, Biden has also tried to show that he has clear eyes on the Russian leader, in a way that his predecessors were not.

Biden and Putin are meeting again now, at a moment when US-Russia relations seem to be getting more complicated by the day. Biden has repeatedly confronted Putin on charges of Russian interference in the 2020 elections and hacking federal authorities in the so-called SolarWinds violation – and imposed sanctions on Russian companies and individuals in Putin’s vicinity.

Despite the sanctions, Putin is unmoved. Cyber ​​attacks in the US by Russian hackers in recent weeks have also hit a major oil pipeline and the world’s largest meat supplier. Putin has denied the Kremlin’s involvement.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who was with Biden when he met Putin in 2011, said in an interview that Biden has a deeper skepticism and perhaps a more informed view of Putin than any of his predecessors in the White House.

“Biden may know the region better than anyone else in the job,” said McFaul. “Biden spent some time in Georgia. He spent a lot of time in Ukraine. I traveled to Moldova with him and he spent a lot of time in the eastern parts of the NATO alliance. He was in these places and heard firsthand about the Russian aggression and threat. … It created a unique component of his analysis of Putin that other presidents did not have. “

In fact, as president, Biden has said that he would take a very different path in his relationship with Putin than former President Donald Trump, who showed Putin unusual deference, and the three other former US presidents whose political lives coincided with Putin’s time Power overlap.

During his first presidency visit to the State Department in February, Biden told agency staff that the days of “turning” were over for Putin – a not-so-thinly veiled shot at Trump. Later, in an interview with ABC News, Biden replied in the affirmative that Putin was “a murderer”.

Trump’s tendency to bow to Putin on his knees left many in Washington openly questioning whether the Russians were embarrassed about the real estate mogul. Both Trump and Putin publicly denied the speculation.

Trump repeatedly tried to thwart the idea – underlined by findings from the US secret service – that Russia had interfered in the US elections in 2016. Asked at their joint press conference at the end of the 2018 summit in Helsinki who he believed – US intelligence or Putin – Trump disagreed.

The White House said Biden will not hold a joint press conference with Putin but will speak to the media alone after Wednesday’s meeting. Government officials say Biden does not want to raise Putin. When asked on Sunday why years of US sanctions have not changed Putin’s behavior, Biden laughed and replied, “He is Vladimir Putin.”

Barack Obama came into office to reshape US-Russia relations, to improve relations with the Russian leadership, and to find areas of common interest.

Before visiting Moscow at the start of his first term, Obama spoke disparagingly of Putin, saying the then Prime Minister had “one foot in the old way of doing business and one foot in the new”. But after a face-to-face meeting during the trip, Obama said he was “very confident that the prime minister is a man today and that he has his eyes firmly on the future.”

That feeling didn’t last.

When Obama and Putin met on the sidelines of the 2013 Group of Eight Summit in Northern Ireland, the reset was aimed at life support.

At the time, G-8 leaders unsuccessfully urged Putin to join a call for the resignation of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden was allowed to stay in Russia after exposing highly classified American intelligence would have.

Obama’s and Putin’s mutual disdain was palpable. At a press photo op in Northern Ireland, they sat grim and avoided looking at each other.

In 2014, after Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine, any hope of a reset was gone.

George W. Bush tried hard to charm Putin, took him to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and took him to his father’s estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, where the 43rd and 41st presidents hooked the Russian president.

But Putin ultimately upset Bush, and the relationship was badly damaged when Russia invaded neighboring Georgia in 2008 after Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ordered his troops into the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Bill Clinton was the first U.S. president to deal with Putin and first met him at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in 1999, months before Putin would succeed Boris Yeltsin as president and a little over a year before it ended from Clinton’s presidency.

In a November 2000 telephone conversation with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Clinton described Putin as “a man of great ambition for the Russians,” but also expressed concern that Putin “could become vague about democracy,” it says a transcript of the call issued by the Clinton Presidential Archives.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last week that Biden had known Putin for a long time and had “never held back” to voice his concerns.

“This is not about friendship. It’s not about trust, ”said Psaki. “It’s about what’s in the interests of the United States. And from our point of view that leads to a more stable and predictable relationship. “

Biden has cultivated several complicated relationships with foreign leaders in his nearly 50 years in national politics. He has established a relationship with China’s Xi Jinping and spent days traveling with Xi in the US and China. In the past few days, Biden has told his aides that his relationship with Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdogan has remained strong despite differences over US support for Kurds in northwest Syria and Biden, who disparages Erdogan as an autocrat.

But Putin left Biden with much more difficult problems that personal diplomacy cannot solve, said Rachel Ellehuus, deputy director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“With someone like Erdogan, Xi or the North Korean (Kim Jong Un), Biden felt that we had something they wanted,” said Ellehuus. “Biden has long recognized that Putin really only wants to undermine the US in order to split NATO, to split the EU. Biden knows that there is little in common with Putin. “

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