US President Joe Biden says he has not seen any movement from Russian President Vladimir Putin over the release of US basketball star Brittney Griner.
“Not Putin’s,” Biden said when asked if he had seen action in Griner’s case.
Speaking to DailyExpertNews’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, Biden said he would be willing to meet with Putin at the upcoming G20 summit in Indonesia if Putin was willing to discuss Griner’s release.
“I don’t plan to meet him. But if he came up to me at the G20, for example, and said I want to talk about Griner’s release, I would meet him. I mean, it would depend,” said Biden. Tapper told the exclusive DailyExpertNews interview.
Biden told reporters on Wednesday that the recent Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure were brutal and “out of reality.”
What Russia says: A Kremlin official responded to Biden, saying he “does not intend to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin” and said on Wednesday that Moscow “never refuses negotiations and all useful international contacts,” according to state media RIA Novosti.
“We never reject an outstretched hand. If we feel and understand that for some reason a partner doesn’t want to meet up, we don’t push ourselves,” Putin’s foreign policy official Yury Ushakov told reporters.
When asked whether Putin would attend the G20 summit to be held in Indonesia in November, Ushakov said “there is still plenty of time” to decide.
“As for the G20… There is still a long way to go, and there is still a lot of time for other meetings (international forums in November) as well. Let’s wait and see,” he said, according to state media.