Summit meeting with Russia is to communicate and not about deliverables: White House

The summit meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin next week in Geneva is about communicating America's views to the Russians and not about deliverables, the White House has said.

Biden and Putin are scheduled to meet in Geneva on June 16, after the US president attends the G7 Summit in the United Kingdom, a NATO meeting and the US-European Union Summit in Brussels.

"We don't think in terms of US-Russia Summits as being about deliverables because if you are going to wait for really significant deliverables you could be waiting a long time conceivably," US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House on Monday.

"So what we need to think about the summit is doing and is fundamentally, is giving us an opportunity to communicate from our president to their president what American intentions and capabilities are and to hear the same from their side. That has value in and of itself,” he said.

Responding to a question, Sullivan said in terms of the timing, it is hard from US perspective to find a better context for a meeting with the Russian president than after time spent with the world's leading market economies, the G7, plus India, South Korea, Australia and South Africa.

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“After his meeting with the presidents of the European Union. And then, and only then going into this session to be able to talk through the complex set of issues in the US-Russia relationship. That from our perspective is the right context within which to engage Russia,” he said.

On the US-Russia Summit, he said as far as whether it comes too early in his presidency, "if you think about what we've dealt with from the outset on Russia it has been a busy time".

"We've extended the New START Agreement. We've imposed costs for election interference and for SolarWinds. We've dealt with a Russian build up on the Ukraine border and of course, we are contending with a range of issues on the cyber and ransomware domain. So we feel that it is an effective and appropriate context and time period for us to have this summit,” Sullivan said.

He said the relationship between the US and Russia is not about relationship and trust.

“It's about a relationship of verification, it's about a relationship of clarifying what our expectations are and laying out that if certain types of harmful activities continue to occur there will be responses from the United States,” Sullivan said.