Biden’s sharp message to Putin: Democracy matters
A scuffle between reporters and Russian security officials before President Biden met with Vladimir Putin in Geneva on Wednesday was a minor event. Yet it spoke to the gulf between the thuggish habits of the Russian leader’s regime and Biden’s hopes for a world friendlier to democratic liberties.
“Russian security yelled at journalists to get out and began pushing journalists,” Anita Kumar, Politico’s White House correspondent, wrote in her pool report. “Journalists and White House officials screamed back that the Russian security should stop touching us. Your pooler was pushed nearly to the ground.”
It was an apt prequel to Putin’s post-meeting news conference where he defended his jailing of a Russian dissident while refusing to use Alexei Navalny’s name.
In a classic display of his devotion to whataboutism, Putin defended his regime’s repression by attacking the U.S. record on human rights and brazenly insisting he is only trying to avoid the sort of disorder the United States experienced in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Putin then spun a remarkable syllogism, arguing that since the United States regarded Russia as “an enemy,” U.S.-supported human rights advocates in Russia were enemies of his state. He also flatly denied that the Russian government has played any role in cyberattacks on the United States, which strains credulity.
Watching Putin play defense underscored the good news from Geneva: The Biden-Putin encounter could hardly have been more different from the bizarre get-togethers between the Russian leader and former president Donald Trump. Biden denied the Russian leader a shared podium, and there was, thankfully, no fawning over Putin, no taking Putin’s word over the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies.
On the contrary, when Biden met later with reporters, he derided any link between the jailing of Navalny and the
Jan. 6 events as “ridiculous,” and used his opening remarks to reaffirm the democracy-strengthening purpose of his European journey.
Biden said he told Putin that “no president could keep faith with the American people if they did not speak out to defend our democratic values, to stand up for the universal and fundamental freedoms that all men and women have in our view. That’s just part of the DNA of our country.”
Biden stressed the Putin meeting was a quest to understand differences and lay the groundwork for future discussions, not an effort to reach substantive agreements. This pointed to the problem posed by the encounter from the start. Beyond enhancing Putin’s profile, it threatened to overshadow the rest of Biden’s European journey, a broadly successful effort to refurbish U.S. alliances with its longtime friends in Europe.
Because of the inevitable media attention it fostered, the Putin meeting threatened to dilute Biden’s democracy message, exaggerate Putin’s world role and undercut the harmonization of Western governments around progressive economic policies.
In the end, Biden dodged the bullet. He gave little ground to Putin beyond the respect he showed by meeting with him. And he preached his democratic gospel.
Biden’s final thought before he headed home: “As long as I’m president, we’re going to stick to the notion that we’re open, accountable and transparent.” Perhaps that was a parting shot at Putin.