China News Agency, Moscow, June 14th, title:

(International Observation)

Can the "Geneva Tango" of the Russian and American presidents jump up?

  China News Agency reporter Wang Xiujun

  On June 16, Russian President Putin and US President Biden will meet in Geneva.

This is the first meeting between the heads of the two major powers since Biden assumed the presidency of the United States, which has attracted the attention of all parties.

Public opinion believes that the meeting will release a signal of easing US-Russian relations, but whether it can achieve results is yet to be known.

The data picture shows Russian President Putin.

Meeting at the lowest point of Russia-U.S. relations

  In recent years, Putin has held separate meetings with Obama, who advocates “restarting US-Russian relations,” and Trump, who is generally regarded as “pro-Russian,” but Russia-US relations have still not improved. normal.

  In January this year, after Biden took office, Russia-US relations showed a situation of "one step forward and two steps back" as the press secretary of the Russian president Peskov called it.

Within a week of Biden's swearing-in of office, the two sides reached an agreement to extend the "New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty", which was seen as casting a ray of sunshine on the haze of Russia-US relations.

  But after that, Biden first called Putin a "killer" in an interview, and then imposed sanctions on Russia and expelled Russian diplomats on the grounds that Russia intervened in the US election and launched a cyber attack on the United States.

This aroused a strong response from the Russian side. Russia called back its ambassador to the United States tit-for-tat, expelled U.S. diplomats, and imposed a number of additional restrictions on U.S. diplomatic agencies in Russia.

In addition, since 2021, the situation in eastern Ukraine has heated up again, and the game between Russia and the United States around this issue has intensified, and the relationship between the two sides has become bleak.

  Putin said in an interview with US media on June 11 that the relationship between the two sides has reached the lowest point in recent years.

In this regard, Biden also stated on the 13th, "Putin is right, and Russia-US relations are indeed at the lowest point."

Data map: US President Biden.

The pre-heated content highlights the intention of the meeting

  Based on the warm-up and release of the two sides before the meeting, it can be seen that the topics of the meeting are very broad, involving bilateral relations, strategic stability, arms control, conflict mediation in hotspots, counter-terrorism, new crown epidemic, network security, human rights, environmental protection, etc. field.

From these contents, it is not difficult to find the intention of the two sides to hold this meeting.

  The first is to ease the relationship.

"Fighting without breaking" has been the main tone of Russia-US relations for many years.

At the moment, the two sides’ emotional confrontation and mutual distrust are very obvious, and it is necessary for the leaders of both sides to sit down and have a face-to-face meeting to prevent the differences and confrontations from becoming uncontrollable risks.

In this regard, the leaders of both countries have clearly mentioned.

Putin has said that the purpose of this meeting is to improve bilateral relations.

Biden also said that the meeting aimed to seek "stability" and "predictability" in the relationship between the two parties.

  The second is to strengthen cooperation.

Although Russia and the United States have huge differences, they share common interests in many areas involving strategic stability, counter-terrorism, and prevention and control of the new crown epidemic.

As two major powers, Russia-US cooperation not only involves itself and each other, it is also related to global security and stability.

At the moment, the epidemic is still continuing, many major arms control treaties have failed one after another, and the international counter-terrorism situation is still severe. Therefore, leaders of both sides need to meet to set the main tone for future cooperation.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov expressed the hope that the leaders of the two countries can determine the main route for further cooperation between the two countries during the meeting.

  The third is to resolve doubts.

Although the US is strong and Russia is weak in terms of national strength, Russia has shown a strong intervention capability and an unignorable influence on regional hotspot issues such as Syria, Ukraine, and North Korea.

On these hot issues, neither Russia nor the United States can lead the situation alone.

In addition, in many areas such as cyber security and human rights, Russia and the United States have obvious differences, accusing each other of each other, and "wars of words" continue.

Therefore, this meeting also gave the leaders of both sides the opportunity to exchange views face-to-face and resolve doubts.

The meeting tests the political wisdom of both parties

  Russia and the United States have faced each other for many years. The relationship between the two countries is solid and deep, and the two countries have also formed a certain social consensus and public opinion environment. Therefore, it is very difficult to achieve substantive progress on many issues with one leader meeting.

Judging from the current position of Russia and the United States, the two sides generally lowered their expectations for this meeting.

Lavrov has stated on many occasions that he will not overestimate the expectations of the meeting and will not create the feeling that the meeting will achieve a "historical breakthrough."

Sullivan, National Security Affairs Assistant to the President of the United States, also said that the meeting was "irrelevant."

  Although expectations are not high, both Russia and the United States have stated that the meeting between the leaders of the two countries is very important in itself.

In fact, this meeting allowed the leaders of the two major powers to communicate face-to-face, broadened their communication channels, and created conditions for promoting mutual trust.

  But as Lavrov said, tango requires two people to dance. If someone is doing breakdancing, then (the meeting is successful) will probably be difficult. The final outcome of this meeting depends to a large extent on the political wisdom of the leaders of the two countries. Looking back on the world history since World War II, unilateralism and zero-sum games have proved to be unworkable, and the concept of win-win and win-win has become the mainstream of the world stage. If the leaders of Russia and the United States can uphold the spirit of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, and demonstrate the responsibility of major powers, the meeting may not exceed previous expectations. (Finish)