President Joe Biden and Russian leader Vladmir Putin meet in Geneva on Wednesday amid a fraught U.S.-Russia relationship that has diverged further over democratic values, allegations from Washington that Moscow presided over a series of brazen cyberattacks targeting the U.S. government and private companies, and human rights. In the background: suspected Kremlin attempts to organize an influence campaign to prevent Biden from becoming president, and before that, its meddling in the 2016 election.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, there have been several dozen U.S.-Russia summits. Every U.S. president from Franklin D. Roosevelt on has met with Russian or Soviet leadership. The focus of these meetings has been on arms reductions, economic aid, democracy promotion and human rights.
Here are six significant summits from World War II to today:
Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin: Wednesday's meeting comes as Washington's list of grievances with Moscow has expanded and deepened. In addition to election meddling allegations, the U.S. believes the Kremlin or its proxies are behind a number of cyberattacks that have targeted U.S. private companies, federal agencies and departments, including the Pentagon and the State Department.
There is also concern that Russia's treatment of its political opposition is worsening. A Moscow court recently ruled that an anti-corruption and pro-democracy organization run by the imprisoned activist Aleksei Navalny is an “extremist group.” Meanwhile an American named Paul Whelan has been detained in Russia for more than two years on spying allegations despite thin evidence.
Putin, meanwhile, may express frustration at the U.S. if Biden expresses clear support for more countries on Russia's borders, especially Ukraine and Georgia, joining the NATO military alliance. Biden and Putin know each other and last met in person when Biden served in the Obama administration. And they don't appear to like each other very much, as illustrated by when they first met in 2011 and Biden said he told Putin, who was then Russia's prime minister: "I don't think you have a soul."
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin: Trump confused many Americans by consistently expressing personal affinity and admiration for Putin at a time when the Russian leader was accused of interfering on the U.S. democratic process in the 2016 president election. During his time in office, Trump also downplayed Russian actions in Ukraine, its disregard for human rights violations and a growing body of evidence linking the Kremlin to cyberattacks against the interests of the U.S. and its allies.
When Trump and Putin met in Finland's capital, the U.S. leader contradicted the conclusions of his own intelligence agencies when he said he saw no reason for Russia to meddle in the vote. "President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be," Trump said at a news conference after the summit.
Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin: "Candid, blunt and businesslike" was how Obama described his last major formal one-to-one meeting with Putin. Their meeting took place on the sidelines of a G-20 summit in China. Early on in his presidency, Obama had tried to "reset" the U.S. relationship with Russia in the hopes of cooperating on a range of issues from missile defense to finding a breakthrough to end a civil war in Syria.
But Russia's territorial aggressions in Ukraine, its growing crackdown on domestic political opponents and a developing allegation that Moscow sought to meddle in the U.S. presidential campaign cast a deep shadow over their discussions. This was illustrated by ice-cold stares the two men gave each other in tense moments captured by photographers at the summit in China.
George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin: "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul," Bush said of his first encounter with Russia's leader, a former KGB operative.
A few months later, in the wake of 9/11, Putin was one of the first world leaders to reach out to Bush to offer practical support in the war against terrorism. Putin would later visit Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where they drove around in a pickup. The pleasantries didn't last: Bush's support for NATO enlargement angered Putin, who also objected to the United States' invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the grounds that there was no evidence Saddam Hussein had a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, as Washington alleged.
Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan: Just a few years earlier, Reagan had branded the Soviet Union an "evil empire." During this Cold War-era meeting, the two leaders discussed ways to bring nuclear weapons under control and foster improved international diplomatic relations. The Geneva summit was intended to herald a new understanding between the two superpowers. Gorbachev and Reagan had good chemistry, and the relationship appeared to be based on trust.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin: The Yalta Conference in the Soviet resort town on the Black Sea saw the leaders of U.S. and Soviet Union, joined by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, talk about ways to hasten the end of World War II and set the stage for rebuilding Europe. Many historians now view this conference as a defining moment that led to the Cold War because Stalin successfully argued for a postwar sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.
SOURCES: U.S. Department of State archive; former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul's book "From Cold War to Hot Peace"; CIA Factbook, USA TODAY research
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