![]() Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said that if he were advising the president, he’d urge him to take the meeting. But foreign policy experts have been more divided. There has been little disagreement within the West Wing about the conclusion that Biden should not meet Putin. The White House has held internal discussions for weeks about Putin’s possible attendance after Indonesian officials announced that the Russian leader would make a rare international trip there. Normally, the initial encounter between the leaders of the world’s two main superpowers would be a headlining event - but Putin stands poised to steal the international spotlight. While Biden plans to avoid Putin, talks have quietly begun between senior aides in Washington and Beijing for the G-20 to host the first in-person summit between the president and China’s Xi Jinping, officials said. That’s raised logistical challenges for the White House. Not all the nations in attendance are expected to rally around Ukraine like European countries have done (though even that alliance is straining, as a Putin-sympathetic government takes over in Italy). Unlike the G-7, which is exclusively made up of wealthy democracies, the G-20 also includes several autocracies. The G-20 summit, to be held along Bali’s beautiful beaches, will be the most anticipated multinational gathering in years, coming as the war has tested Europe and strained economies to the brink of recession. ![]() As Russia subsequently threatened to invade Ukraine, the two men spoke several times - the last of which was in February, just days before the war began. The pair have only met once during Biden’s presidency, a summit in Geneva in the summer of 2021. ![]() “You don’t usually meet with killers and war criminals.” “We know what President Biden thinks about President Putin: he thinks he’s a killer, he thinks he’s a war criminal,” said William Taylor, former U.S. officials have ruled out a formal meeting and are taking steps to ensure that the American president does not encounter his Russian counterpart in a hallway or even in a leaders’ group photo. It can’t be ruled out that Biden and Putin might cross paths at some point during the November summit, according to officials who note that the two men may, at some point, attend the same large plenary gathering. ![]()
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