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President Biden touches a piece of steel from the World Trade Center at a memorial to the September 11 attacks on Monday at NATO headquarters in Brussels. NATO allies joined in collective defense with the United States after the terrorist attacks. Patrick Simansky/AP Hide caption
Toggle caption Patrick Semansky / AP
President Biden touches a piece of steel from the World Trade Center at a memorial to the September 11 attacks on Monday at NATO headquarters in Brussels. NATO allies joined in collective defense with the United States after the terrorist attacks.
Patrick Simansky/AFP
President Biden said he is not focusing on whether he can “trust” the Russian president before they sit down this week, but he hopes he can find some areas in which he can work with Vladimir Putin — while setting “red lines” for other areas.
Biden spoke with reporters a day after meetings with NATO allies in Brussels. He said that he discussed the upcoming US-Russia summit with members of the coalition and that leaders support his communication with Putin.
Biden has repeatedly said he wants a stable and predictable relationship with Russia. On Monday, he called Putin “tough” and “brilliant” and said he was a “worthy opponent.”
“It’s not about trust, it’s about approval,” Biden said. When you write treaties with adversaries, do not say: I trust you. You say: This is what I expect. “
Biden said he hoped Putin would be interested in “changing the world’s perception of him” and engaging in “the appropriate behavior of a head of state.”
Biden said he would defend Ukraine at the meeting, but also said Ukraine had not yet met the criteria for joining NATO, saying the country still needed to get rid of corruption cases.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets with Biden at the NATO Summit on Monday in Brussels. Biden and Erdogan met privately afterwards to discuss some thorny issues. Oliver Mattis/Pool/AP Hide Caption
Toggle the caption Olivier Matthys / Pool / AP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meets with Biden at the NATO Summit on Monday in Brussels. Biden and Erdogan met privately afterwards to discuss some thorny issues.
Olivier Matisse / Paul / AFP أ
The NATO summit is Biden’s last stop on his multi-day tour of Europe. On his first trip abroad as president, Biden sought to reassure allies that the United States was committed to taking the lead in international institutions, as opposed to the last administration’s “America First” agenda.
Biden met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the summit for about two hours. After that, both Erdogan and Biden said it was a productive session. Relations were strained by Turkey’s purchase of a Russian missile defense system – and Biden’s decision to use the word genocide to describe the mass massacres of Armenians by the Turks more than a century ago. The Turkish government has strongly abandoned Biden’s statement.
It’s great to meet POTUS Joe Biden and talk about our shared commitment to democratic values and the rule of law – they are the true cornerstone of our transatlantic alliance #NATO pic.twitter.com/ySf8lEEGA6
– Zuzana Caputova (@ZuzanaCaputova) June 14, 2021
Biden said he was “happy” that NATO leaders agreed that the alliance must adapt to confront more modern threats such as climate change and cyber-attacks and combat the growing influence of China – something he has been pushing for.
The coalition has agreed to support a new cyber defense policy aimed at deterring and defending hacking threats.
On the China front, Biden scored a win during talks with the Group of Seven in Cornwall, England, over the weekend when the group agreed to help developing countries fund infrastructure projects to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative and roll back some of Beijing’s trade practices.
Biden described the rise in power of authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia as a threat to global order and the spread of democracy. He urged the Allies to serve as a “model” of the strength of democratic norms.
Biden plans to meet European Union leaders on Tuesday in Brussels, then heads to Geneva, where he will hold talks on Wednesday with Putin. The two leaders will hold two bilateral sessions with assistants and advisors. After that, Biden will hold a one-on-one press conference before returning to the United States.
This would be in sharp contrast to former President Donald Trump’s controversial joint press conference with Putin in Helsinki in 2018. Trump faced a storm of criticism after he supported Putin’s refusal to interfere in elections in 2016, even though US intelligence agencies have found to the opposite result.
Prior to his talks with Putin, Biden briefly met on the sidelines of the NATO summit with the presidents of Poland and Romania. He held a separate session with leaders from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – members of the coalition closest geographically to Russia and most concerned about its incursions into Ukraine.
A White House official told reporters that they discussed the latest move by Moscow-backed Belarus to halt a commercial flight to Lithuania so that a critic of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko could be arrested. The White House said Biden planned to raise the issue with Putin on Wednesday.
NPR’s Franco Ordonez contributed to this report.
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