By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON (AA) – US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold their first face-to-face meeting next month, the White House announced on Tuesday.
The June 16 summit will take place in Geneva, Switzerland following over a month of deliberations between Moscow and Washington over the timing and location in which to hold the meeting.
"The leaders will discuss the full range of pressing issues, as we seek to restore predictability and stability to the U.S.-Russia relationship," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.
The meeting is going to be tacked on to the tail end of Biden's first international trip in which he is set to visit Europe for meetings with allies, including a G7 summit in Britain from June 11 to 13, and meetings with NATO and EU partners in Brussels on June 14.
The summit comes amid mounting problems in the US-Russia relationship, including a sweeping cyber attack the US blames on Russia that compromised government and corporate networks. The US imposed sanctions on Russia and expelled its diplomats in response to the hack, and has repeatedly criticized Moscow for its jailing of opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
Navalny had been poisoned in a nerve agent attack, and was sent to Germany for medical treatment. He was detained by Russian authorities upon his return to the country.
Biden proposed the meeting in April when he phoned Putin to warn him of the then-pending penalties the US was to impose on Russia in response to the SolarWinds hack.
US and Russian officials then spent the next month-and-a-half negotiating the appropriate time and third-party nation in which to meet with Biden expressing confidence that the summit would happen.
