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Putin-Biden meeting in Geneva

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Nobody wants to soften Putin-Biden summit agenda, Kremlin spokesman says

Dmitry Peskov also declined to comment on a statement by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov who had said that Washington was going to receive a number of "uncomfortable signals" from Moscow in the coming days

Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov Mikhail Metzel/TASS

Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov

© Mikhail Metzel/TASS

MOSCOW, June 1. /TASS/. The Kremlin believes it is important to make sure that Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Joe Biden of the United States hold their much-awaited summit but there are no plans to soften the meeting’s agenda, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

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"Naturally, nobody wants to soften the agenda in the run-up to the summit. We think that it is still very important that this summit takes place," he pointed out.

Peskov emphasized that preparations for the summit were still underway. However, he declined to comment on a statement by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov who had said that Washington was going to receive a number of "uncomfortable signals" from Moscow in the coming days. "This requires a request to the Foreign Ministry," the Kremlin spokesman clarified.

Moscow is thoroughly studying the entire spectrum of Washington’s foreign policy in the run-up to the forthcoming summit Peskov added.

"I suppose this is why we are conducting a deep analysis of the entire spectrum of [US] foreign policy, this is why we are poring over all the events leading up to the summit, as well as the corresponding statements and actions. We are studying the way these statements correspond to concrete action in order to avoid any overestimation or underestimation," Peskov said, answering a question by TASS on whether there is a risk of underestimating the US for some reason, like in 1961 at the famous meeting between First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev and then US President John F. Kennedy.

Earlier, the Kremlin and the White House announced that the much-awaited summit between Putin and Biden would take place in Geneva on June 16. This will be the first face-to-face meeting between Putin and Biden since the 46th US president took office. It will also be the first Russian-US summit since July 2018, when Putin met with then US President Donald Trump in Helsinki.

According to the Kremlin, the heads of state will discuss the conditions and prospects for further fostering Russian-US relations, strategic stability matters as well as pressing issues on the international agenda, which include cooperation in fighting the pandemic and settling regional conflicts. On May 30, Biden stated that he plans to discuss the topic of human rights during the summit.

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