Pollak: Joe Biden Got Nothing in Geneva Summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin

Pollak: Joe Biden Got Nothing in Geneva Summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin: President Joe Biden gave Russian President Vladimir Putin almost everything he could have wanted at their Geneva summit. He elevated Putin above other leaders, including American allies; and failed to force any real concessions on Russian policy. The degree to which the summit was a disaster became evident when Putin emerged for his press conference — alone with a forum all to himself. The Biden team did not want to appear with Putin at a joint conference after the meeting– both because Biden would look frail next to Putin, and because of the media dogma that President Donald Trump had somehow done something terrible by behaving cordially when appearing alongside Putin in Helsinki, Finland, in 2018. Putin fielded softball questions from Russian news agencies, but he also welcomed hostile questions from the U.S. media. (In fact, Putin, an enemy of press freedom, was more polite than Biden would be, and took far tougher questions.)