Putin-biden summit depends on US behaviour, says Russia
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Joe Biden would be contingent on US behaviour after reportedly telling Washington to scrap a plan to impose new sanctions on Russia.
Biden, in a phone call on Tuesday, proposed a summit of the estranged leaders to tackle a raft of disputes and told Moscow to reduce tensions over Ukraine triggered by a Russian military build-up.
Moscow says the build-up is a threeweek snap military drill in response to what it calls threatening behaviour from Nato and has said the exercise is due to wrap up within two weeks.
Putin’s spokesman said that the proposed summit, in a yet to be chosen European country, was contingent on future US behaviour in what looked like a thinly veiled reference to potential US sanctions.
“Of course, further work on this proposal to meet in a European country will only be possible taking into account an analysis of the actual situation and further steps from our counterparts,” Peskov was cited as saying by the RIA news agency.
Russia-us ties slumped to a new postCold War low last month after Biden said
he thought Putin was a ‘killer’ and Moscow recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations. The envoy has still not returned almost a month later.
Peskov played down the prospect of a summit earlier on Wednesday, saying it was too early to talk about it in tangible terms.
“It’s a new proposal and it will be studied,” Peskov told reporters, saying no preparations for the summit were yet underway.
Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov had invited John Sullivan, the US ambassador in Moscow, to talks on Wednesday, Peskov said. The US embassy did not immediately comment on the meeting, but the RIA news agency reported that Ushakov had told Sullivan that Moscow would “act in the most decisive way possible” if the United States undertook any new “unfriendly steps” such as imposing sanctions. —