– … Vyacheslav Alekseevich, didn’t this summit meeting seem scanty to you?
– In some ways, yes. Because, in fact, much progress has not been achieved in any of the major areas.
But, on the one hand, one must take into account the physical condition of President Biden – I do not think that he is now ready for any lengthy one-on-one negotiations.
Let me remind you that when they met in Geneva (on June 16 this year, that summit was covered in detail by Komsomolskaya Pravda – A.G.), there were still meetings in different formats, and not just one-on-one.
And here we got a conversation between the president and the president, without the involvement of team members from one side or the other. This is one reason.
Second. Well, apparently, the conversation was not the easiest one, so maybe there was no desire to drag it out too much.
I can explain this.
– I have a feeling that the continuation should be after some time.
– Naturally, a face-to-face summit is planned at the beginning of next year.
And the current meeting, indeed, became such an intermediate one, which was probably necessary in order to remove the acute tension in relations between the two countries … Concerning the Ukrainian crisis, moreover, artificially created by the American side. And it has already become a factor in the domestic policy of the United States.
It was important for them. And it was important for us to state our position.
I consider our official statement, which was made after the summit, to be key. These are Putin’s thoughts, which he himself expressed to Biden. The point is that
we need security guarantees, guarantees that NATO will not expand to the East and that a military structure will not be deployed on the territory of Ukraine.
– Moreover, I got the impression that Vladimir Vladimirovich meant guarantees on paper, and not like Gorbachev at one time – in words, right?
– Naturally, he meant paper guarantees and, in any case, from the text of our statement it follows that instructions were given to start negotiations on this topic.
And I can hardly imagine, of course, how the Americans can agree to such an agreement. But, if progress in this direction has been achieved, then I consider this already a great positive result of the summit.
But again, this is so far only an agreement to negotiate. So there was no further progress.
– I have a feeling that Putin had a presentiment that this was not some kind of sold-out event. At night I flew from India, then opened the metro in Moscow, solved the economic issue … That is, in principle, what Putin wanted to achieve was achieved, right?
– I think that Putin probably wanted more, we all want more than we get.
But it is clear that there were no overestimated expectations this time.
And it is no coincidence that Dmitry Peskov spoke about this, and he repeated more than once that we do not expect anything breakthrough from the summit.
There really was nothing breakthrough. And it couldn’t be, given the climate in the United States.
Here is a step forward, as I understand it, in the ambassadorial direction, because Biden himself raised this issue, as Ushakov said, related to the work of diplomats. Naturally, Putin countered this by saying that our actions were a response to the American ones and it seemed that an agreement had been reached that Russian diplomats would be able to familiarize themselves with the state of our property, which was seized by the Americans.
That is, there is a little step in this direction. And hence, perhaps, Putin’s proposal to nullify all these diplomatic restrictions, which were made during the Trump era, so that the diplomatic missions of the two countries could function normally.
– That is, two points in the asset. The first is a proposal to somehow resolve the issue of NATO’s non-advancement to the east and document it at last?
– I think that – yes, in some form this proposal sounded. The Americans agreed to discuss this issue related to the overall security structure. This is a conversation for a long time. Diplomatic things are yes.
Plus, apparently, there was a small exchange across Iran. And, in general, the Russian position was fixed that – before the return to the comprehensive plan – the Americans, of course, do not accept it – something must be done in order to prevent the Iranian nuclear program and lift the sanctions against Iran. That is, there were no serious disagreements on Iran.
– Well, and the final question. That is, Joe Biden was going to talk to Zelensky after these negotiations – can he now say, like, Volodya, calm down, Putin is not going to start a war against Ukraine?
– Putin was not going to start a war against Ukraine anyway.
As far as I understand, Zelenskiy was far less worried about this than Biden. In any case, there has been no panic in Kiev in recent days. And panicky statements were mainly sounded by American politicians, representatives of the US administration – that is, the Americans in every possible way inflated this topic to a much greater extent than Ukraine itself.
I think that Zelensky perfectly understood that there was no such serious threat. But yes, Biden, I believe, will talk with Zelensky – it was unlikely that it was yesterday, but maybe he will call today and tell him.
But it is obvious to me that the serious American military, too, cannot fail to see that there are simply no military preparations on the Russian side, and all these pictures are in favor of the poor, because now drawing such kind of schemes, showing boxes of supposedly this equipment that are on display like a parade, this is for very naive people. It is clear that if there were any preparations, firstly, no one would have known about this, and secondly, if the war began, then certainly not with some ground operations, which in modern warfare do not have any the slightest significance.