Corporate DispatchPro Cover Story
Rival accomplices in Geneva Vladimir Putin secured a top-level meeting with the fifth American President in a row. Joe Biden held a three-hour conversation with his Russian counterpart at the idyllic Lake Geneva, with an old-style library globe as their fitting backdrop.
With relations between their countries at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War, both men were keen to drum up expectations ahead of the face-to-face summit. The meeting, however, had a broader perspective and the two leaders stepped into the hall as if they were representing all like-minded nations, not just their own. Tensions between the West and Russia have been rising at a brisk pace. Accusations of espionage, cyberattacks, and disinformation flowing in both directions were dwarfed by concerns about the Russian troops converging on the border with Ukraine. The crisis in Belarus was another flashpoint, particularly after the detention of journalist Roman Protasevich. The botched attempt on Alexei Navalny’s life and the subsequent arrest of the opposition figure is another sore issue for both sides. Biden and Putin have been around long enough to understand each other fairly well and, in their comments just ahead of the meeting, they both sought to frame their respective positions as unfriendly but workable. The American President described Putin as “a worthy adversary” with his counterpart returning the political compliment by warning that interlocutors have to tread carefully around Biden. The themes for discussion spanned from ransomware to unrest in Minsk and the elections in Iran, but the main takeaway was that America regards Russia as a world power. The last US Democratic President before Biden, Barack Obama, sought a new agreement with Putin on the reduction of nuclear weapons but his
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