Biden confident he can meet Putin soon

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected to be able to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin soon as the White House said ongoing differences between the US and Russia would not need to be resolved in advance of a summit.

Biden told reporters at the White House that he wanted to meet Putin despite Russia’s build-up of military forces near Ukraine.

“It does not impact my desire to have a one-on-one meeting, and you’ll notice he had more troops before. He’s withdrawn troops,” Biden said, referring to Putin.

Asked about meeting Putin next month, Biden said: “I’m confident we’ll be able to do it. We don’t have any specific time or place. That’s being worked on.”

The US has said it supports Ukraine amid what US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week called Moscow’s “reckless” troop build-up.

Biden and his advisers would like to add a summit with Putin in a third country while the US president is in Europe in mid-June for a Group of Seven meeting in Britain and talks with North Atlantic Treat Organization allies in Brussels, Belgium.

Negotiations with the Russians on staging the summit, however, are continuing, according to White House spokesperson Jen Psaki.

“We’re working through the question of some logistics – place, location, time, agenda, all the specifics – that was always going to happen (on) a staff level. It’s really up to them what they want to achieve,” Psaki told reporters.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited by Russian news agency TASS as saying Russia was studying the possibility of a PutinBiden meeting.

“We continue to analyze the situation,” TASS quoted Peskov as saying when asked whether the Russian side has officially agreed to the proposed summit.

The US has a number of grievances with Russia, including its treatment of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, but Psaki said these grievances do not need to be resolved in advance of a Biden-Putin summit.

“Obviously, human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, values are all issues that the president, Secretary Blinken, National Security Adviser (Jake) Sullivan raised with their counterparts. But the invitation to have a discussion and have a meeting was not offered with the prerequisite that every issue is resolved in advance. We expect we will still continue to have disagreements,” Psaki added.