New Delhi: In a path-breaking development, United States National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and the Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolay Patrushev held consultations on United States-Russia relations in the run-up to the summit between President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on June 16.
The two NSA talked about strategic stability between the two former adversaries with the fall-out of China being brought into the arms control and cyber control regimes. In simple terms it encompasses nuclear weapons, missiles, anti-satellite weapons, and anti-missile defense.
The joint statement issued after the meeting makes it clear that both the countries want to work towards normalizing ties and keeping in touch with each other on critical global issues.
According to the statement, the US-Russia NSA meeting was a logical continuation of the recent discussions held in Reykjavik between Secretary of State Blinken and Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
“At the meeting, both sides agreed that a normalization of the US-Russian relations would be in the interest of both countries and contribute to global predictability and stability” the statement said.
Biden, making his first international trip as president will go to Geneva immediately after separate summits with his key Western allies in the G7, NATO, and the European Union.
The Geneva summit will come almost three years after Trump famously sided with the Kremlin leader over the US intelligence agencies on the question of whether Moscow interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.
