If Joe Biden thought that he can slander Russian President Vladimir Putin and get away with it, then the US President is being proven wrong again and again. Putin has absolutely outsmarted Biden several times in a gap of few days.
To explain it briefly – Biden called Putin a ‘killer’ out of desperation. So, the Russian President invited him for a one-on-one debate. However, Biden chickened out and refused to take up the challenge. Then, Biden tried to trap Putin. He invited the Russian President for a dialogue, thinking he too will reject the invite. Yet, Putin shocked him by staying silent and not refusing the dialogue offer. Now, Biden has chickened out again with visible discomfort.
It is becoming quite clear that Biden is hiding in fear. He makes loose remarks about the Russian President, but when it comes to facing Putin in person, the US President backs off. While refusing Putin’s invite for a one-on-one debate, Biden took a bizarre excuse. His press secretary, Jen Psaki said that Biden was too busy to engage in a debate with the Russian President.
This time around Biden had himself proposed a strategic stability dialogue with Putin. He proposed that the two leaders meet “in a third country” and discuss “the full range of issues facing the United States and Russia.”
But even before Putin made any formal reaction to the dialogue offer, Biden ran away from a bilateral interaction with the Russian President. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke to CNN, and declared, “There isn’t currently a summit on the books.” Sullivan added, “It’s something we’re talking about. And that summit would have to take place, of course, in the right circumstances in a way that could actually move the relationship forward.”
Now, it definitely sounds bizarre that the US President first made an invite for bilateral dialogue, and then refused to go ahead with it by arguing that the circumstances are not appropriate. So, why did Biden make the absurd move, which frankly makes him look indecisive and unwise?
Actually, Biden did not really want to have a dialogue with the Russian President. The US President was only trying to make up for the embarrassment he faced by rejecting Putin’s debate challenge earlier. He would have thought that if Putin also rejected the offer, it will imply that the two leaders do not really want to meet each other.
Yet, Putin has turned out to be too smart for Biden. The Russian President stayed silent and did not refuse the dialogue offer. Meanwhile, the prospect of a Biden-Putin meeting generated a lot of enthusiasm and Finland even offered to host the US-Russia meeting. For Biden, this was a cause of worry as it seemed very likely that Putin would actually decide to go ahead with a bilateral summit with the US President.
On the other hand, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the situation even more ambiguous for the Biden administration. Lavrov said that Russia had a “positive attitude” to the summit offer and was analysing it.
As such, Putin made Biden believe that he would eventually accept the dialogue invite. The idea of meeting Putin in a bilateral summit would have, of course, made Biden paranoid and he started searching for ways to hide from the Russian President. So, Suvillan was given the task of finding a lame excuse and revoking the strategic stability dialogue offer made to Putin.