MOSCOW, June 15. /TASS/. The forthcoming meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Joe Biden in Geneva will not resolve the key disagreements between the two sides, but it may well promote the beginning of specific arms control efforts, the program director of the international discussion club Valdai, Ivan Timofeyev, told TASS on Tuesday.
"The meeting will be meaningful as such, and it may yield positive results," said Timofeyev, an assistant professor of the political theory department at the Russian Foreign Ministry's university MGIMO. "I should say that the main positive outcome would be the launch of an arms control dialogue at the summit level, which might then proceed at the level of agencies concerned: the Russian Foreign Ministry and the US Department of State, the defense ministries, and so on and so forth. A summit meeting is capable of triggering such a dialogue at the working level."
He stressed that both leaders were approaching the meeting with pragmatic goals, a realistic vision of the situation in Russia-US relations and mutual interest in a dialogue. The analyst believes that both Putin and Biden would bring up some problem issues, such as the Ukrainian conflict and the observance of human rights.
At the same time, Timofeyev forecasts no breakthroughs in bilateral relations or codification of some rules of confrontation.
"I believe that in general we should not expect any excessive results, but a signal may well be sounded to certain agencies to get down to work on concrete issues," Timofeyev concluded.
Putin and Biden will meet in Geneva on June 16. According to the Russian presidential press-service, they will discuss the current condition of bilateral relations and the outlook for their development, strategic stability, and also the international agenda, such as cooperation in the struggle against the coronavirus pandemic and the settlement of regional conflicts. It will be the first-ever Putin-Biden meeting since the latter took office.