right. i ve been to a lot of meetings where it starts with the big meeting and then skinnies down with president biden and president putin in the room. the whole point of this meeting was for him to be able to sit down in a very small setting, just one other person in the room, someone he trusts more than anyone else, toy blinken, and just lay out, here s what i see. here s what i think you re doing. here s where we can measure progress and we can assign these guys, lavrov and blinken, to set up some teams to work on it. and, chuck, what i do think was effective in that press conference, he was pretty honest to say, i don t know if we re going to solve these problems. i m not trying to raise expectations too high here. what i ve done now is communicated what my views are in all these things, and we ll be able to see in the next six months to a year to two years whether or not there is any progress on these things. and i think it s smart to not raise expectations too much given that it
0 so president biden has shown his willingness to engage putin where he can. and i think if we don t see any reciprocity, if putin doesn t want for play then this mix that president biden has offered is going to have to skew much more heavily towards the confrontation side so he gets the last word. stick with us, andrea, as we await president biden, he s set to begin his press conference in a few minutes. we re at the top of the hour. we ve been discussing what will president putin said in his press conference. he spent a lot of time doing what about-isms, denying, deflecting any criticism going his way. but trying to create the condition saying, hey, we re creating a stable situation with president biden. let me bring in mike memoli, of course, traveling with the president. mike, i m curious, i know you ve been doing some reporting as putin s press conference was going on. what s your sense of the balance they re going to strike with trying to sort of how much they respond directl