PUTIN-BIDEN TALKS COULD BE HELD IN EUROPE: RUSSIAN OFFICIAL

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Tuesday said that a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Joe Biden, could be held in a European diplomatic capital if an agreement is eventually reached by the two countries.

“There is no final agreement yet, but I think that anyway if an agreement is reached [the meeting will be held in] one of the European diplomatic capitals,” Ryabkov told RBC. “A whole range of countries have offered and keep offering their capacities for organizing the meeting of the Russian and the US presidents,” the diplomat continued.

Commenting on the possibility of Geneva hosting the meeting, Pierre Vercauteren, a political sciences professor at UCLouvain University in Belgium, told Sputnik that it was probably the best option for the summit between the leaders.

“For this very important meeting between the Russian and the US leaders, Geneva, Switzerland is the best option. The city is the third-largest diplomatic centre of the world after Washington DC and Brussels. It is in Europe without being in the European Union. The EU is not neutral in the issues that will be discussed by the two leaders,” Vercauteren said.

The professor noted that the strict neutrality of Switzerland was perfect, recalling that the four allied victors of World War 2 — the USSR, the US, the UK and France — used to meet in Geneva until the 1950s to deal with all post-war issues.

Switzerland, in the meantime, did not comment on the claims that it could host the summit. The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs also declined to tell Sputnik whether Switzerland had notified Moscow and Washington of its readiness to host the top-level summit.