Former US Ambassador To Russia Understands Absence Of Joint Briefing Post Geneva Summit

Former US Ambassador to Russia Understands Absence of Joint Briefing Post Geneva Summit

Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said that he understands why there will be no joint press conference after the Wednesday meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Joe Biden, and mentioned that the briefing after Putin's meeting with former US President Donald Trump did not serve Washington's interests

GENEVA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th June, 2021) Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said that he understands why there will be no joint press conference after the Wednesday meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Joe Biden, and mentioned that the briefing after Putin's meeting with former US President Donald Trump did not serve Washington's interests.

Putin met with Trump in Helsinki in July 2018.

"I know well the history of the Soviet- and Russian-American summits, when I served in the White House, we had meetings with and without press conferences. I can guess why they don't want a general press conference now. Because the latter in Helsinki was terrible for American national interests," McFaul told reporters when asked if the US' refusal to hold joint briefing shows weakness.

The former ambassador added that Biden is a very different man in comparison to Trump.

"By the way, I was at the last meeting between Putin and Biden in 2011. I'm not worried how Biden will react. But this experience with Trump was pretty bitter," McFaul added.

At the same time, the former ambassador rejected the assumption of journalists that this indicates uncertainty in the positions of the American side and mentioned that the oppositive is true as the Russian president does not answer questions that he is asked.

"In an interview with NBC there was a question about interference in the American elections, he said that no evidence was presented. But excuse me, Mueller wrote thousands of pages, and the Senate wrote fifteen hundred. So when Putin says that Americans don't want to tell the truth, it's hard to have a productive dialogue," McFaul said.

The ambassador also said Putin claims that the US has its problems with extremists and provided an example of US Capitol riots "and he compares these people" with Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny but they have nothing in common.

McFaul said that such conversations are counterproductive so it is better to talk about work.