https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/bidens-useless-summit-putin-joseph-klein/
President Joe Biden met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on June 16th and came away empty-handed. They agreed to have their minions meet for future talks on cybersecurity and other contentious issues between the two countries.
“Earlier today, President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin finally met for their big summit in Geneva,” Jimmy Fallon said on Wednesday’s Tonight Show. “When Biden said ‘I’ll give you my email,’ Putin said, ‘I already have your email — and password and Venmo, don’t worry about it.'” That’s about as good a commentary as any on the insignificance of this summit.
At least prior to former President Donald Trump’s first summit with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator released three American hostages who had been held for months in North Korea’s inhuman labor camps. This time, Putin didn’t even release the two former U.S. Marines imprisoned in Russia, Trevor Reed and Paul Whelan, as a symbolic gesture to reciprocate for Biden’s waiver of the Nord Stream 2 sanctions. Russia’s release of the American hostages should have been Biden’s minimum condition for holding the summit in the first place.
All that Biden’s summit meeting with Putin accomplished was to give Putin a platform on the world stage where he appeared far more energetic and confident than Biden. It’s very troublesome — and embarrassing — when the leader of the free world takes fewer than half the questions from the press following the summit meeting than Putin took at his separate press conference. And Biden grew testy at his own solo press conference when the last questioner — from CNN, no less – asked Biden how his meeting with Putin could be characterized as constructive, given Putin’s past behavior and continued denials of any wrongdoing. “If you don’t understand that, you’re in the wrong business,” Biden barked at the reporter, for which he later apologized.
Putin and Biden had some nice words to say about the summit and about each other. However, Putin remained defiant in denying that any Russians were responsible for the cyberattacks launched against government and business sites in the United States. Thinking that the “best defense is a good offense,” Putin used his solo press conference to charge that the United States was responsible for far more malicious cyberattacks.