Joe Biden And Vladimir Putin Won't Be Friends But See Path Together

Joe Biden described Vladimir Putin as "a worthy adversary" and at a news conference said that they would see where they had common interests.

There was no talk of gazing into Vladimir Putin's "soul" and the Russian president didn't try to gaslight a rookie US leader. Instead, Putin's first summit with the fifth US president of his tenure, Joe Biden, was about mutual respect -- and the meeting in Geneva could, both of them said, lead to a more predictable, if still tense, relationship. In contrast to his predecessors, Biden made no suggestion he expected to reset the relationship and he has already piled pressure on Russia over concerns including alleged election meddling, attacks by cybercriminals against the Colonial Pipeline and other US infrastructure and over the poisoning and jailing of dissident Alexei Navalny. But after earlier remarks that included calling Putin "a killer," Biden on the eve of the summit described the Russian leader as "a worthy adversary" and at a news conference afterward said that they would see where they had common interests.