Biden pledges to help Europe tackle Russia

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW: The US will stand with its European allies against Russia, President Joe Biden has promised ahead of the first face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this month.

Biden will head to Europe on Wednesday, and is set to attend both the G7 and Nato summits as well as hold a high-stakes meeting with the Russian leader in Geneva on June 16. The summit comes amid the biggest crisis in ties between the two countries in years, with tensions high over a number of issues.

In an op-ed for The Washington Post published on Saturday, Biden promised to shore up Washington’s “democratic alliances” in the face of multiple crises and mounting threats from Moscow and Beijing.

“We are standing united to address Russia’s challenges to European security... and there will be no doubt about the resolve of the United States to defend our democratic values, which we cannot separate from our interests,” he wrote.

Moscow, according to Russia’s news agency TASS.

In April, the US imposed a broad array of sanctions on Russia, including curbs to its sovereign debt market. “We hear threats from the Congress, from other sources. It is all done within the context of the US domestic political process.”

Putin said such behaviour reminded him of the Soviet Union. “The problem with empires is that they think they are powerful enough to make some mistakes.

“We will buy these [people], bully them, make a deal with them, give necklaces to them, threaten them with battleships. And this will solve all the problems. But problems accumulate. A moment comes when they cannot be solved anymore.”