Biden’s Summit Gave Putin the World Stage He Craves

All the trappings of a major international summit were on full display as President Joe Biden and Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin met Wednesday in an 18th century manor house overlooking the mountains of Switzerland and waters of Lake Geneva. A row of large Russian and U.S. flags flapped along Geneva’s main bridge, the Pont du Mont-Blanc. The city’s iconic 400-foot spray of water in Lake Geneva was lit up the night before in red and blue for the colors of the two countries’ flags. Thousands of Swiss spectators—few cheering or protesting, most with neutral expressions and snapping photographs— lined the streets to watch the two leaders’ motorcades travel through the city.

The stagecraft played to Putin’s personal vanity and his long-standing desire for Russia to be taken seriously as a major rival to the U.S. The summit setting was designed to place the two leaders on equal footing, and emphasize the global power they each hold. When Biden and Putin sat down to meet in a library filled with leather-bound books inside the Villa La Grange, an antique globe had been placed between the two leaders.