The Speaker of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin on May 30 denounced the European Parliament and its President David Sassoli for attempting to sabotage the summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The European Parliament and its President David Sassoli have tried to gain political weight using the upcoming meeting between the Russian and U.S. Presidents as a pretext,” Duma Speaker Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel. He recalled Sassoli et al. inviting Washington to sign on to a draft joint statement to be made public ahead of the summit, that would call for toughening sanctions against Russia and China. “As a matter of fact, the European Parliament is imposing a confrontational agenda on Joe Biden ahead of his meeting with Vladimir Putin. It is obviously meant to exert pressure, to create a negative backdrop for the summit—in a bid to gain political points on the topics that might be discussed by the two Presidents.” Volodin said, in a reckless attempt “to wreck possible Russian-U.S. agreements, the Europeans are cutting their own throats” and ignore the role of the Russian-U.S. relations for peace and well-being in Europe, calling it a “miserable attempt to butt into the dialogue.”
RIA Novosti reported that Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also stated yesterday: “The Americans must assume that a number of signals from Moscow ... will be uncomfortable for them, including in the coming days,” which Reuters tied to Biden’s fresh announcement he will ask Putin to respond about “human rights” at the summit. Ryabkov said Russia would be prepared to respond to Biden’s queries about human rights in Russia and said that Moscow was being more flexible than Washington when it came to drawing up an agenda for the summit, RIA reported, according to Reuters.
