Here are the highlights from President Joe Biden's presser post-Putin summit

One of the most highly anticipated political events of the year drew to a close earlier than expected Wednesday, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden ending their historic meeting at a summit in Geneva after less than four hours.

Biden and Putin first met in a small, face-to-face session and then expanded their talks to a wider meeting with other officials. They were set to hold separate press conferences after the summit.

The two leaders shook hands as they greeted each other at Villa La Grange in Switzerland, chosen as the location for the summit due to its history of political neutrality.

On meeting his U.S. counterpart, Putin said he hoped the meeting would be productive.

“Mr. President, I’d like to thank you for your initiative to meet today,” Putin said, sitting next to Biden and accompanied by their respective foreign ministers. “It is always better to meet face to face,” Biden responded, Reuters reported.

The summit had been expected to last up to five hours. It included an initial meeting between the presidents and their closest officials, and then talks between the wider Russia and U.S. delegations.

Global media attention on the summit was intense and there were scuffles between Russian and American reporters at the entrance of the summit venue.

The summit began with a first meeting between Biden and Putin accompanied by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, as well as translators.

After this initial meeting a wider delegation met for several sessions before the press conferences, with Putin going first.

The agenda

The Putin-Biden summit was closely watched around the world as U.S.-Russia relations remain tense following a slew of geopolitical clashes and international sanctions in recent years.

The agenda for the presidents’ meeting was expected to include “strategic stability,” climate change as well as nuclear stability, arms control and cybersecurity and potentially a range of other topics including the fate of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Ukraine, Belarus and the outlook for Russian and U.S. nationals imprisoned in each other’s countries.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 got it suspended from the then-Group of Eight and earned it international sanctions. Since then Russia has been accused of 2016 U.S. election meddling, two nerve agent attacks (in the U.K. in 2018 and allegedly on Navalny in 2020) as well as involvement in cyberattacks and human rights abuses.

Russia has always denied the multiple accusations leveled against it, saying it is a victim of anti-Russian sentiment in the West.

The summit came hot on the heels of a flurry of American diplomacy with its allies in Europe and beyond. Biden visited the U.K. for the Group of Seven summit last weekend, then a NATO summit in Brussels on Monday and then an EU-U.S. summit on Tuesday, giving the U.S. leader plenty of food for thought for his meeting with Putin.

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