President Joe Biden will hold a solo press conference after his meeting with Vladimir Putin next week, denying the Russian preside...
President Joe Biden will hold a solo press conference after his meeting with Vladimir Putin next week, denying the Russian president the opportunity to stand by him and answer questions from the press.
A joint press conference is traditional when two world leaders meet and President Donald Trump held one with Putin when the two men met in Helsinki in July 2018.
Biden, however, won't give Putin the power of his presidential bully pulpit and will be able to put his own spin on their meeting without the Russian president able to contradict him.
President Joe Biden will hold a solo press conference after his meeting with Vladimir Putin next week
The two leaders meet in Geneva on Wednesday in an 18th-century Swiss villa overlooking Lake Geneva. It's their first face-to-face meeting since Biden became president.
'We expect this meeting to be candid and straightforward and a solo press conference is the appropriate format to clearly communicate with the free press the topics that were raised in the meeting—both in terms of areas where we may agree and in areas where we have significant concerns,' a White House official said on Saturday.
The format of the meeting is still being finalized but, according to the official, the plan is 'for both a working session and a smaller session.'
Russian and American officials have been going back-and-forth on the format of the meeting, volleying ideas and jockeying for position as the date gets closer.
The sit down comes amid rising tensions between Washington and Moscow, with Biden making it clear he will take a tougher stance on Russian aggression than his predecessor in the Oval Office, Donald Trump.
'We’re under no illusions that this is going to be an easy relationship; it is going to be an extremely challenging relationship. And I think we’ve been quite clear about that,' a senior administration official told reporters on a briefing call Friday.