Putin praises summit result, calls Biden a tough negotiator

Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 17 praised the outcome of his summit with U.S. President Joe Biden and called him an astute and shrewd negotiator.

The two leaders concluded three hours of talks on June 16 at an opulent villa facing Lake Geneva by exchanging expressions of mutual respect but firmly restating their starkly different views on cyberattacks, the conflict in Ukraine, political dissent and other issues. At the same time, they announced an agreement to return each other’s ambassadors and mapped more talks on arms control and cybersecurity.

Putin, who hailed Biden as a highly experienced and constructive interlocutor at a news conference in Geneva, offered more praise of the U.S. leader on June 17 in a video call with graduates of a government management school.

Biden kept him on his guard with his savvy negotiating skills, Putin said.

“He perfectly knows the matter,” Putin said. “He is fully concentrated and knows what he wants to achieve. And he does it very shrewdly.”

Putin particularly emphasized the importance of an agreement to conduct dialogue on cybersecurity between experts, saying it would help reduce tensions.

Biden said he and Putin agreed to have their experts work out an understanding about what types of critical infrastructure would be off-limits to cyberattacks. The agreement follows a flood of ransomware attacks against U.S. businesses and government agencies that U.S. officials said originated from Russia.

Putin, who has strongly denied any Russian state role in the cyberattacks, argued on June 17 that “instead of finger-pointing and bickering, we should better combine efforts to fight cybercrime.”

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the summit as positive and productive, saying it allowed the leaders “to directly put forward their positions and try to understand where interaction is possible and where there can be no interaction due to categorical disagreements.”