“The hero of our time” is written next to the black and white graffito in Geneva that shows Alexej Navalnyj.

The Russian opposition leader then forms a heart with his hands.

His case should also come up at the meeting between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, which began at 1:25 p.m. with a handshake in the Swiss city.

Sofia Dreisbach

Editor in politics.

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    A senior American government official who was approached on Navalnyj just prior to the meeting said that no topic was excluded from negotiations per se, certainly not that of human rights, nor that of individual prominent cases. Some took it as a concession by Putin before the summit that Navalnyj's wife Julija and his daughter Dasha were allowed to visit the opposition on Tuesday in the prison colony a hundred kilometers from Moscow.

    But the list of things the two presidents would have to discuss on neutral ground in Geneva is long and most of the issues are difficult.

    The American side spoke of four to five hours of negotiations, while Russian Foreign Minister Dmitry Peskov even questioned whether this would be enough on Wednesday morning.

    Nobody will pin the presidents down for a certain period of time, that is their decision alone.

    USA classified as “unfriendly state”

    It was surprising that Putin arrived at the Villa La Grange in Geneva on Wednesday without any significant delay. He often keeps his interlocutor waiting, including the British Queen or the Pope, and that was also suspected before this summit. But after a brief greeting from Biden and Putin by the Swiss Prime Minister Guy Parmelin, the presidents have been sitting behind closed doors since half past one. Biden said at the beginning of the meeting that it was "always better to meet face to face". Putin expressed hope that "the meeting will be productive". Pictures showed the two in front of the book wall in the library of the historic mansion in Parc de La Grange, which is stocked with 15,000 books, with their foreign ministers Antony Blinken and Sergej Lavrov.

    First of all, so it was said before the meeting of Kremlin spokesman Peskov, the bilateral relationship must be discussed and the "rubble removed". In fact, diplomatic relations between the two countries have been in tatters since the spring. After Biden had answered yes in an interview to the question of whether he considered Putin a “killer”, Moscow called its representatives back from Washington in March. In April the American ambassador in Moscow was urged to return home, and in May Russia put the United States and the Czech Republic on a list of “unfriendly states”.

    Their embassies are now unlikely to employ any or only a few local staff and are in fact no longer able to go about their work. The Russian employees were also hit hard: their contracts in American agencies had to be terminated.

    Before the meeting, Peskow also recalled the “employees unable to work” and the “lack of dialogue in such sensitive areas as counter-terrorism and information security”. All of this must be made up for. Overall, however, expectations of the meeting between the two presidents were low, the hope: relaxation at a low level. Given the scheduled length of the summit, after the end of which Biden and Putin wanted to fly back home that evening, many things should be dealt with at least briefly: from Russian cyber attacks on America via eastern Ukraine to nuclear arms control, from energy policy to climate issues on a possible exchange of prisoners in Russian and American prisons.

    Donald Trump's meeting with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018 only lasted a good two and a half hours. The American side has definitely learned one thing from this: Because Putin duped the American president at the joint press conference and got Trump to turn against his own secret services, the presidents will appear separately in front of the press this year. The current motto is: first Putin, then Biden.