Russian President Vladimir Putin will, most likely, meet with his American counterpart Joe Biden in Reykjavik, RIA Novosti reports.
On April 13, Biden called Putin and offered to meet in the coming months in a third country. The American leader noted that he still hopes to build “stable and predictable” relations with Russia.
In an interview with RIA Novosti, Academician Sergei Rogov, Scientific Director of the Institute for US and Canadian Studies of Russian Academy of Sciences, considers Reykjavik to be a non-accidental choice. He reminded that in 1986 the presidents of the USSR and the United States, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, met in the capital city of Iceland, which “became a turning point in easing the tension of the first Cold War.” “This will allow Putin and Biden to approve Gorbachev’s and Reagan’s resolution, which states that there should be no nuclear war and that there are no winners in the nuclear war,” Rogov said.
Tensions have risen sharply in Donbas recently. In this context, the West accuses Russia of intensifying “aggressive actions,” demands an explanation for the accumulation of Russian troops in the Crimea, in the Rostov region, near the Ukrainian border. The Kremlin responded that the troops were moving through the territory of Russia, and that no one is threatened.
Moscow has repeatedly emphasized that it is not a side to the domestic conflict in the Ukraine; it is interested in Kiev’s coming out of the political and economic crisis.
