Top US General Meets Russian Counterpart in Finland :: WRAL.com

By Oren Liebermann and Ellie Kaufman, CNN

CNN – Chief of Staff General Mark Miley met with his Russian counterpart for about six hours on Wednesday in a “productive” meeting in Helsinki, at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Russia.

“When the military leaders of the great powers communicate, the world is a safer place,” Miley said after meeting with Valery Gerasimov, the chief of staff of the Russian armed forces.

The meeting covered “a variety of issues around the world,” said Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Milley. The discussion was “militarily focused” and “serious”, he added.

“Both generals show mutual respect for each other, although they have both found the opportunity to joke or joke from time to time.”

The meeting took place at the residence of the Finnish government Koningstedt in Vantaa, 25 miles north of the Finnish capital, amid a prolonged period of heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow.

Despite the ongoing and sometimes controversial disagreements between the US and Russia over Ukraine, cyberattacks and the Arctic, the purpose of the meeting was to improve dialogue and decompression between the two militaries.

In recent months, the Biden government has pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin to fight a spate of cyber-attacks and ransomware attacks coming from Russian territory, especially after the Colonial Pipeline cyber-attack shut down its largest fuel pipeline. But efforts, including President Joe Biden’s meeting with Putin in June, have yielded little, with no indication that Putin has curbed cyber-attacks from Russia.

The United States has also warned that Russia is trying to intervene in the 2022 midterm elections. the issue to Putin personally.

“It is a clear violation of our sovereignty,” Biden said at the time.

In April, the White House unveiled a sweeping series of new sanctions against Russia for 2020 election interference, cyberattacks and the ongoing occupation of Crimea. These measures added to an already wide range of sanctions against Russia since its invasion of Ukrainian territory in 2014. At the time, Russia was conducting a military exercise near Ukraine, where the largest concentration of forces on the country’s border since the occupation of Crimea .

In a call between Biden and Putin a month after they met in June, the US president said they had set up a more direct means of communication and expected Putin to act when cyber-attacks came from Russia. Asked if there would be additional consequences for Russia, Biden replied: “Yes.”

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