Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin will meet in Geneva on June 16

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, and the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, will meet on June 16 in the Swiss city of Geneva, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

As Psaki explains in this note, both leaders will discuss all the “urgent” issues on the table while they will seek to “restore predictability and stability” in the relationship between the two countries.

Among those issues to be discussed are Ukraine and the forced landing of a Ryanair plane in Belarus to detain an opposition activist, as reported by the White House and published by Reuters.

The Geneva meeting will be the first high-level meeting between the leaders of both countries since Putin and former US President Donald Trump (2017-2021) met in Helsinki in July 2018.

The White House announcement confirms this long-awaited meeting that both governments have been preparing in recent days. Yesterday, the US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, and his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, met precisely in Geneva and agreed, according to the two countries in separate statements, that “normalize” relations between the US and Russia it will benefit both countries and the international community.

The two parties expressed their confidence in the possibility of finding “mutually acceptable solutions” in various areas.. In April, Biden proposed to Putin during a phone call to meet soon in a third country, to which the Kremlin responded positively.. Last week, the foreign ministers of both nations, Antony Blinken and Sergei Lavrov, met in Reykjavik (Iceland) to discuss positions and prepare for the summit.