let s say, symbolic. and they understand that president biden has to stand on that stage, and has to take a very serious tone. and has to lecture about human rights. but i don t think they believe that, fundamentally, the u.s. will go much further than that. even in a worst-case scenario, wh were alexei navalny to die. and we know, from putin s behavior, on a host of different issues, that how it appears on the world stage is not, necessarily, something that overly concerns him. if anything, he appears to have embraced this sort of machiavellian, arch-villain reputation. that, on the one hand, he denies these things. but, on the other hand, he, somehow, appears to not endorse it but certainly find it amusing. when he was asked, in that nbc news interview, about all the list of political proponents of his who have mysteriously died. he started laughing. so, i don t think there is a sense that anything s going to change, in terms of putin s treatment of alexei navalny
you know, first of all, the russian government can agree with the united states government in a formal context to, basically, assure any kind of attacks on critical infrastructure. and indeed, president biden said a whole list of of areas that were completely off limits, and where there would be a pretty harsh response been handed over to the russian government. i think he said 16 areas. but, you know, your big problem is, of course, if hackers and criminals are basically attacking the same systems. and so, you know, is there some kind of mechanism, within that agreement to have the respective governments go after them? and i think, you know, president biden also said, well, look. how would you guys feel if your oil infrastructure, for example, your pipelines were being, basically, attacked and infiltrated and hacked by, you know, some guy sitting in i think he said florida or maine. he was, obviously, just plucking a couple places out of the air. i mean, the problem we always
scenario in which the united states was at odds with its allies and seemingly friends with its foes. so he was there to try to rebalance the scales and not create an unforced error. and i think by that low standard, by that low expectation, he would probably consider this good enough. you say that, when it comes to meetings like these. there there are two subjects that president biden is equally impassioned about. what are they? yeah. this is an interesting one, in this case. because i over the years, you have heard biden return to two, big themes. one of them is actually his suspicion of vladimir putin. fundamentally. i mean, if you go back to 2014, i remember interviewing him at the at that point. and he said he didn t think that the united states was paying enough attention to the threat posed by putin. this was a time, after all, we were paying more attention to iraq and syria and so on. two years before the presidential election, in which russia interfered. the other poi
he denied any involvement in cyberattacks. he downplayed human-rights abuses. even refused to say alexei navalny s name. so, how does that account to a constructive meeting as president president putin? well having said that, he left for the airport and home. but not without saying this to reporters out on the ramp. i owe my last question an apology. i shouldn t have i shouldn t have been such a wise guy with the last answer i gave. anyway, thanks for being here. perspective, now, from fiona hill, national security council senior director for european and russian affairs during the last administration. she is currently a senior fellow at the brookings institution. ms. hill, having been at the 2018 trump-putin summit in h helsinki, i m wondering how you think today s events in geneva compare? well, i think it s very hard to compare with the helsinki summit. in terms of the optics of it from the outside, and the press
on at helsinki. it s often been at other meetings, as well. but, look, i do think that putin has reached a point where he may be interested in just taking the temperature down ever-so slightly. and not getting things out of control. fiona hill, really appreciate it. thank you. thanks so much, anderson. more to talk about. cnn chief national security correspondent, jim sciutto. and clarissa ward joins us from geneva. clarissa, president biden said he did what he came to do. what were the tangible deliverables, so to speak, that came out of this summit? well, i think, the biden administration was clear, from the get go. that tangible deliverables might be few and far between. we heard putin say that they were speaking the same language. and now, the question is does that translate into something more substantive, further down the line? they issued a joint communique where they talked about this strategic-stability dialogue. cooperating on areas of arms control. potentially, on sy