Last night President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the audience of Russia’s widely-watched TV program “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin.” that a meeting of the Presidents of Russia and the United States had been agreed, TASS reported yesterday. Peskov declared, “The most important thing is the mere fact of a meeting, because it is rather important for our bilateral relations, for leading them out of that sad situation in which they are now.” The Sunday night program, “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin,” airs on Rossiya-1 TV network.
Peskov said that the meeting was being discussed now. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “told the President in detail about the outcome of his talks with Mr. Blinken, and the President will make a decision,” Peskov said. “As soon as he does this, we will inform the public.”
President Biden is scheduled to visit Europe in mid-June to attend the G7 and NATO summits. The G7 summit will be held in the U.K. resort town of Carbis Bay on the Atlantic coast of the Cornwall Peninsula on June 11-13. NATO will hold its summit in Brussels on June 14.
TASS reported that Peskov further stated: “As for strategic stability, this is an inalienable part of Russian-U.S. talks, and strategic stability issues in any case should and will be discussed at various levels,” He emphasized that Russia has the “most advanced strategic forces in the world—they are of course a guarantee of stability because they are a deterrence element.” TASS referenced remarks the Russian President made to the meeting Russian Pobeda (Victory) Organizing Committee on May 20, in which he highlighted: “We have the most advanced nuclear deterrent forces of all nuclear powers. We can say with confidence that it is a cutting-edge deterrent. We have acquired an altogether new type of strategic arms—the Avangard intercontinental hypersonic glide vehicle. We have hypersonic weapons that nobody else has, and we continue to develop them. We are acquiring new aircraft systems that have no analogues in the world, surface warships and submarines, and the most advanced drones,” according to the Kremlin website transcript.
As to the choice of the venue for the two Presidents’ talks, Peskov responded that the choice of a city “is more a technical decision. The most important thing is the fact of the meeting.”
