With Putin, Biden Tries to Forge a Bond of Self-Interest, Not Souls

Theirs seems likely to be a strained and frustrating association, one where the two leaders may maintain a veneer of civil discourse even as they joust on the international stage.

No one peered admiringly into anyone’s soul. No one called anyone a killer. By all appearances, President Biden’s much-anticipated meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was not warm, but neither was it hot. As he became the fifth American president to sit down with the troublesome Mr. Putin, Mr. Biden on Wednesday made an effort to forge a working relationship shorn of the ingratiating flattery of his immediate predecessor yet without the belligerent language that he himself has employed about the Russian leader in the past. If their opening encounter in Geneva proves any indication, theirs seems likely to be a strained and frustrating association, one where the two leaders may maintain a veneer of civil discourse even as they joust on the international stage and in the shadows of cyberspace. The two emerged from about three hours of meetings having reviewed a laundry list of disputes without a hint of resolution to any of them and no sign of a personal bond that could bridge the gulf that has opened between their two nations.