MOSCOW, June 15. /TASS/. The issue of the possible signing of final documents at the Russia-US summit has not been solved yet, Russian Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, adding that the US Department of State is still holding consultations on the matter.
"What is most important, and it was not easy either, the agenda of the summit has been agreed on, we even discussed the order of issues that the leaders will focus on beforehand. Currently, only one issue remains unagreed, it concerns final documents and the final document of the summit. In this respec,t our colleagues from the Foreign Ministry are holding negotiations," he said.
There is still some time left, though not much, "the documents issue will be finally solved by the end of the day" on Tuesday, Ushakov noted.
On June 14, ahead of the summit, Presidential Aide had a telephone conversation with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. "All agreements reached on the format, the agenda, we negotiated them in the past ten days, those agreements remain in force, nothing has changed. Biden will arrive, everything is OK," he said.
As planned, the first meeting between President Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden will start at 1:00 pm local time (2 pm Moscow time) on June 16, Ushakov said, adding that irrespective of whether the sides will manage to agree on a final statement, "the meeting will obviously be useful anyway."
Putin spoke over the phone with Biden twice in 2021 — on January 26 and April 13, the aide said. Previously the Russian president met Biden when the latter was vice president of the United States in 2011. "That was their first and last — by Wednesday (June 16) — meeting," he said, noting that another meeting was held in a video format when both presidents participated in an online summit on climate in April 2021.
"The Geneva meeting was initiated by the Americans, particularly, during the telephone talk on April 13," Kremlin Aide said. "Biden put forward the idea, then we started developing it," he said, adding that the American side initially offered a meeting in one of the European countries, considering that Biden was going to Britain, and later — to Brussels. "They wanted to embrace the opportunity of this Biden’s trip to hold the first summit with us, and we welcomed that," Ushakov said.