In 2014, when Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula, the first major land grab in Europe since World War II, it pushed relations between Moscow and the United States to their lowest ebb since the Cold War. Somehow, with every passing year, further ruptures—including election interference, cyberattacks, and the U.S. withdrawal from a Cold War-era nuclear arms treaty—have caused the relationship to nose-dive further.
Wednesday’s summit in Geneva, Switzerland, between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin was seen as an important effort to place some guardrails on the relationship to prevent the world from seeing what rock bottom would look like. But beyond a joint statement agreeing nuclear armageddon is in neither country’s interest, little substance emerged from the summit. Now, both countries will try to lay the groundwork for future arms control talks, with a glimmer of hope for further talks on other contentious issues like cyberattacks and prisoner exchanges.
