Biden: U.S. not looking for conflict with Russia

U.S. President Joe Biden agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest assessment that U.S.-Russia relations are at their lowest point in years but insisted that while the two countries may have fundamental disagreements, “we are not looking for conflict”.

The U.S. president also addressed the issues of autocracy versus democracy, the climate crisis, future pandemics and problems caused by his predecessor Donald Trump, while holding a press conference to mark the end of the G7 summit in the English county of Cornwall.

Overall, Biden said, the summit had been “extraordinarily collaborative and productive” and – in contrast to Trump’s divisive, hyper-nationalist approach – he declared: “America is back at the table.”

Putin said in an interview on Friday that the U.S. and Russia currently had “a bilateral relationship that has deteriorated to its lowest point in recent years”.

On Sunday, Biden agreed that relations were at a low point but indicated this was because of Russia’s conduct on matters ranging from human rights violations to election interference to tolerating criminal cybergangs in its region that have been holding U.S. commercial and government entities to ransom by hacking their computer systems.

“I think he’s right, it’s a low point, and it depends on how he responds to acting consistently with international norms, which in many cases he has not,” Biden said in his press conference.

Biden said he had told Putin, before he won the White House in 2020 by defeating Trump, whom Putin had supported in his 2016 shock win, that he would look at whether the Russian leader had been involved in trying to interfere with the latest U.S. election.

“I checked it out, so I had access to all the intelligence. He was engaged in those activities. I did respond and made it clear that I’d respond again," The Guardian cited Biden as saying.

But he added that when they meet in Geneva this week he was “not looking for conflict” but to resolve “actions which we think are inconsistent with international norms”.