President Biden puts decades of experience to the test in high-stakes meeting with Vladimir Putin

President Joe Biden convenes the highest-stakes talks of his long career Wednesday when he joins Russia's Vladimir Putin for a summit, an encounter set to test his decades of experience on the world stage and lay down an early marker of his diplomatic skills.

Depending on its outcome, the meeting could shadow Biden as he returns home to help revive his domestic agenda. He'll arrive to the 18th-century villa on Lake Geneva, a stunning summit site, bolstered by support from western allies he spent the past week consulting ahead of his face-to-face with the Russian President, who left Russia for Geneva on Wednesday, approximately two hours before the summit was set to begin, according to state-owned media. In Biden's telling, those leaders all backed him in his decision to meet Putin now, in the first six months of his presidency, before he's had a chance to fully formulate a Russia strategy.