It was a planned outage, or outrage
When will Russia stop cracking down on the cyber attacks against foreign funded political dissidents?
Having downloaded Ruptly's video of Russian President Putin's press conference after the summit on 2021-06-16 in Geneva, Switzerland with USA President Biden I watched and paused to take notes.
I had earlier seen analysis of the other press conference and decided it was not even worth listening to. I'll happily let other people's analysis of that stand.
The key activity/policy results are:
further work on strategic arms control (nuclear and other weapons)
starting work on cyber weapons
return to full diplomatic relations
engaging on regulations of the use of the northern passage now that climate change and improved icebreaker technologies have made it available
regional conflict mitigation (Ukraine, but not Syria, was mentioned)
I am very happy for all of these. Time will tell if they come to anything. It is never bad to have major nuclear powers discussing pre-planned agendas.
I have two takeaways from my observation and note taking; the differing questions of the western/non-western media and Putin's demeanor including one of his comments.
How Good are the Reporters?
With a few exceptions, the questions from non-western (largely Russian) media were both open and addressed key topics which were likely to have been substantive within the summit discussions. The exact opposite is true for the western media. The questions were framed nastily and largely had to do with minor western talking points.
Here are the topics raised by non-western reporters' questions, omitting a few that really were not important:
Ukraine conflict
Ukraine joining NATO
Return of diplomatic relations
Nuclear weapons treaties
Exchange of political prisoners
Militarization of the Arctic
Improving trade relations
Climate Change
COVID-19
Potential for improved diplomatic relations between Russia/US
Here are the topics raised by western reporters, in entirety:
(CNN) Russia to commit to stopping cyber attacks on the US? Russia to commit to stop threatening Ukraine? Russia to commit to stop 'cracking down' on opposition?
(ABC) Will Russia stop the cyber attacks? Your political opponents are in jail or dead, Navalny wants free and fair elections, what are you so afraid of?
Biden says you have no soul, but what about vists to each country?
(Euronews) Can trust be developed? Can relations be "transparent and understandable"?
(BBC) Biden wants "stable and predictable" relations. Can Russia shed this image and thus improve relations?
(Bloomberg) Changes in US sanctions? Given that Biden has some support of the US deep state can these discussion become agreements? Will there be new working groups on the Ukraine and Cyber-security issues? Which specific "red lines" were established?
(Canada Radio) [from her 9 year old daughter] why is the US/Russia relationship so complex? and Why cant young people protest in Russia?
To consider this, assume that reporters are asking questions that they or their editors think that their readership are interested in/concerned with. Then consider the framing of the questions by the western media.
The one "western" reporter who actually asked relevant and interesting questions was from Bloomberg. The rest of it is misinformed aggressive questioning or about topics of little import to geopolitics. Alternatively, the non-western reporter's questions were (I ommited a couple) about relevant topics and not framed as "gotcha's".
Putin
The ABC reporter asks her question, starting very respectfully with "Thank you for taking my question, Mr President" and then finishing with "your political opponents are all dead or in jail" and my brain melts. I watch Putin carefully as he receives the end of the translation. He is not angry or frustrated, but calm. He's up there to take these questions. Its his job, and he knows it.
What is actually happening is completely unsurprising, but interesting. The Russian diplomatic core have compiled a series of likely aggressive questions, and composed a set of responses to them. What Putin is doing is "reading from the script". But, there aint no teleprompter. He's been briefed and is performing to the planned diplomatic core response. Of course, he can say whatever the hell he wants, but understands that he is a part, important, in a greater effort.
The western media have characterised Putin's deflection towards Black Lives Matter, or the January 6th events at the US Capitol as "whataboutism" when "challenged" on western talking points, which is to be expected. What is really happening is a continuation of what happened in Alaska earlier in the year. At a US/China diplomatic meeting it begins with the US diplomat Blinken and co blathering about human rights abuses or other talking points. I characterise the Chinese response as "If you wish to hold a session of accusations about internal policies and actions, we have come well prepared. Would you instead prefer to actually do the job at hand and discuss international relations and geopolitical tensions?" Putin is following that agreed, established, response pattern. The US has yet to learn that the China/Russia quasi-alliance is now not cowed, and will not take this "from a position of strength" any more. You are palpably not in a "position of strength"; get over it and re-adjust your attitude so that we might deal with the issues at hand.
Whilst being concerned about the rising influence of China, and particularly so because of its Social Credit system, I am very happy to see a bit more sophistication in international dialogue as opposed to so much US bombastic rhetoric.
The question about the militarisation of the Arctic is instructive. Putin rattles off the names and dates of the two relevant international treaties, and defines the terms of one. I don’t care if this was a planted question, for it was important. It signaled an issue I had completely missed (amongst many others) and allowed Putin to put it out front. If we are going through this Global Warming situation, that does two things; it opens up the northern passage for trade, and (the bit I'd missed) it creates a route of invasion of Russia from its north which had never previously been possible.
This was Putin telling Russia's adversaries that it is fortifying their northern borders and have the best icebreaker technology, so dont even think about it. He, of course, focuses on the trade route aspect, but knows that foreign policy analysts will be reading what he has said and are very capable of reading between the lines.
In summary, the Arctic issue is the key "outcome" that you will see nowhere in general discourse about this summit and Putin's press conference. I hope I've given you a sense of its potential influence on trade (think about how it relates to the BRI) and how Russia is upgrading its northern border defenses.
Scoring Myself
I made predictions and was mostly wrong based on the key outcomes:
arms treaty, yes
cyber weapons, yes
COVID, no
climate change, no (apart from the Arctic)
diplomatic relations, missed that one
regional conflicts, to be expected, but didn’t bother to mention it
C- for me. There is a lesson in there somewhere about predicting the future. xD
Sources
The “title image” is a frame from the linked Ruptly video. When I saw it, it just instantly jumped out at me. Lavrov has no “security card” visible. Can you imagine a security guard asking Lavrov for his card?