Biden says he's confident he can meet Russia's Putin soon
US President Joe Biden said on Friday he likely to manage to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin soon and the White House said ongoing distinctions between the USA and Russia would not should be resolved before a summit. Biden told reporters at the White House, he wished to meet Putin despite Russia's build-up of military forces near Ukraine.
"It generally does not impact my desire to truly have a one-on-one meeting and you'll notice he previously more troops before. He's withdrawn troops," he said. Asked about meeting Putin in June, he said: "I'm confident we'll be able to do it. We don't have any specific time or place. That's being done." The United States 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 wish to add a summit with Putin in a third country as the US president is in Europe in mid-June for several Seven meeting in Britain and talks with NATO allies in Brussels. But negotiations with the Russians on staging the summit are continuing, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters. "We're working through the question of some logistics - place, location, time, agenda, all of the specifics - that was always likely to happen at a staff level. It's really up to them what they would like to achieve," she said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited by Russian news agency TASS as saying Russia was studying the probability of a Putin-Biden meeting. "We continue steadily to analyse the problem," TASS quoted Peskov as saying when asked if the Russian side has officially agreed to the proposed summit. The United States has a number of grievances with Russia, including its treatment of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. But Psaki said these grievances need not be resolved before a Biden-Putin summit.
