The summit meeting of US Presidents Joe Biden and Russian Vladimir Putin is the largest event on the agenda of Biden's first foreign visit, as it coincides with the decline of the two countries' relations to their lowest level in decades, but the two leaders affirmed the desire to cooperate.

And it will not be the first Geneva meeting between them. They met for the first time in 2011 when Putin served as prime minister and Biden was vice president, and according to a previous statement by Biden, he told Putin in a private meeting in his office in the Kremlin, "I don't think you have a soul."

The two men clashed again after 2014, when former President Barack Obama instructed Vice President Biden to support Ukraine in the wake of its revolution and pressure Russia to scale back its military intervention in eastern Ukraine.

Then Putin intervened in the US presidential elections of 2016 and 2020 with the aim of winning Republican candidate Donald Trump, according to US intelligence assessments.

After Biden came to power, he said in a television interview last March that he believed Putin was a "murderer", and then added during a press briefing yesterday, that "he was speaking honestly when he described him as such."

Putin's reaction was ambiguous, and he said in an interview with the "ABC" network (ABC), that he was not "surprised, the term killer, like the term macho, is common in Hollywood, and such discourse is part of the American political culture where it is considered normal there, and is not considered Naturally here."

Relationships are not limited to personal knowledge between them. Putin's foreign policy and American affairs team has not changed over the past decade, while Biden's team previously served with the Obama administration, and dealt a lot with their Russian counterparts.

Putin receives Biden in 2011 (French)

Low Expectations Ceiling

Washington cannot ignore or downplay its relationship with Russia, even though American opinion makers recognize that Russia is working tirelessly to reduce American influence around the world.

Announcing the summit, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Biden's goal was not to bring about a dramatic shift in relations with Russia, but rather to "restore predictability and stability to relations between the United States and Russia."

Biden has said on several occasions that he wants to establish a "more stable and predictable relationship with Russia," but has also said he would raise several controversial issues, including Russian incursions into Ukraine, interference in the US election, and the poisoning and imprisonment of Russian dissident Alexei. Navalny, and repeated cyber breaches of American facilities and interests.

Many American commentators believe that their country has no choice but to engage in constructive relations with Russia.

Moscow has put forward ideas related to nuclear disarmament, confronting the "Covid-19" pandemic, and climate change as possible areas in which the two countries can cooperate.

Refusal to cooperate on these issues would undermine the idea of ​​US foreign policy based on principles and global responsibility.

For her part, Angela Stint, director of the Center for European Studies at Georgetown University, told US public radio, "It's a very important meeting, we know that at the end of the Trump administration, the relationship between the United States and Russia was worse than it was before Trump took office despite all his attempts We were really in a situation where we hit rock bottom in relations between Moscow and Washington."

Noting the importance of holding the summit on a personal level, Stent said it was much easier to manage tensions when presidents, such as former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, developed working relationships with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

"So it's important to get back to the traditional way of meeting with Russian leaders, because I think American officials have always found it very difficult to get anything done with Russia unless there are signals from the president himself," she added.

Psaki: Biden's goal is not to bring about a dramatic transformation in relations, but to restore predictability and stability (Reuters)

alternating red lines

Michael McFaul, America's ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, doubts the Biden team's expectations of the meeting and the expectation of controlling relations between Washington and Moscow, and said, "I admire this ambition, but I think it is completely unrealistic, because I do not think that Putin himself is interested in a stable relationship that can So I think they have to face the possibility that the relations between Washington and Moscow will be different from what they look forward to."

McFaul points out that the problems that led to the recent tension still exist, and it is not certain that the summit will solve them, pointing out that the history of the two countries' relations does not predict a breakthrough, and that the two sides will turn the summit into a test of the limits of the strength of the other party.

In turn, Brian O'Toole, an expert at the Atlantic Council and a former Treasury official, considered that the main goals of the Biden administration towards Russia are "trying to contain and repel Putin's broader attack on democracy, on the Western model of governance, and on the foundations of the established international order."

Michael Kimage, a professor of history at the Catholic University in Washington, agrees with the difficulty of a rapid change in the foundations of the two countries' relations with the holding of the first summit of Biden and Putin.

In an article in Foreign Affairs, Kimaj indicated that Russia's military expansion in several regions, especially Syria and the Mediterranean, is bringing the American and Russian armies closer to each other in the presence of wide contradictions and different goals, predicting that these contradictions will continue for decades, and that one summit will not change conditions on the ground.