[There have been a series of
beneath-the-surface meetings between the two countries as the Biden
administration applies a more sober approach to relations with the Kremlin.]
By Anton Troianovski and David E. Sanger
Russian nuclear-capable missiles
have been spotted on the move near Ukraine, and the Kremlin has signaled the
possibility of a new intervention there. It has tested hypersonic cruise missiles that skirt American
defenses and cut all
ties with the American-led NATO alliance. After a summer pause,
ransomware attacks emanating from Russian territory have resumed, and in late
October, Microsoft revealed
a new Russian cybersurveillance campaign.
Since President Biden took office
nine months ago, the United States has imposed sweeping new sanctions on
Russia, continued to arm and train Ukraine’s military and threatened
retaliatory cyberattacks against Russian targets. The American Embassy in
Moscow has virtually stopped issuing visas.
As world leaders met at the Group
of 20 summit this weekend in Rome, Mr. Biden did not even get the chance to
hash things out with his Russian counterpart face to face because President
Vladimir V. Putin, citing coronavirus concerns, attended the event remotely.
Yet beneath the surface
brinkmanship, the two global rivals are now also doing something else: talking.
The summit between
Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin in June in Geneva touched off a series of
contacts between the two countries, including three trips to Moscow by senior
Biden administration officials since July, and more meetings with Russian
officials on neutral ground in Finland and Switzerland.
There is a serious conversation
underway on arms control, the deepest in years. The White House’s top adviser
for cyber and emerging technologies, Anne Neuberger, has engaged in a series of
quiet, virtual meetings with her Kremlin counterpart. Several weeks ago — after
an extensive debate inside the American intelligence community over how much to
reveal — the United States turned over the names and other details of a few
hackers actively launching attacks on America.
Now, one official said, the United
States is waiting to see if the information results in arrests, a test of whether
Mr. Putin was serious when he said he would facilitate a crackdown on
ransomware and other cybercrime.
Officials in both countries say the
flurry of talks has so far yielded little of substance but helps to prevent
Russian-American tensions from spiraling out of control.
A senior administration official
said the United States was “very cleareyed” about Mr. Putin and the Kremlin’s
intentions but thinks it can work together on issues like arms control. The
official noted that Russia had been closely aligned with the United States on
restoring the Iran nuclear deal and, to a lesser degree, dealing with North
Korea, but acknowledged that there were many other areas where the Russians
“try to throw a wrench into the works.”
Mr. Biden’s measured approach has
earned plaudits in Russia’s foreign policy establishment, which views the White
House’s increased engagement as a sign that America is newly prepared to make
deals.
“Biden understands the importance
of a sober approach,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, a prominent Moscow foreign policy
analyst who advises the Kremlin. “The most important thing that Biden
understands is that he won’t change Russia. Russia is the way it is.”
For the White House, the talks are
a way to try to head off geopolitical surprises that could derail Mr. Biden’s
priorities — competition with China and a domestic agenda facing myriad
challenges. For Mr. Putin, talks with the world’s richest and most powerful
nation are a way to showcase Russia’s global influence — and burnish his
domestic image as a guarantor of stability.
“What the Russians hate more than
anything else is to be disregarded,” said Fiona Hill, who served as the top
Russia expert in the National Security Council under President Donald J. Trump,
before testifying
against him in his first impeachment hearings. “Because they want to
be a major player on the stage, and if we’re not paying that much attention to
them they are going to find ways of grabbing our attention.”
For the United States, however, the
outreach is fraught with risk, exposing the Biden administration to criticism
that it is too willing to engage with a Putin-led Russia that continues to
undermine American interests and repress dissent.
European officials worry Russia is
playing hardball amid the region’s energy crisis, holding out for the approval
of a new pipeline before delivering more gas. New footage, circulated on social
media on Friday, showed missiles and other Russian weaponry on the move near Ukraine,
raising speculation about the possibility of new Russian action against the
country.
In the United States, it is the
destructive nature of Russia’s cybercampaign that has officials particularly
concerned. Microsoft’s disclosure of a
new campaign to get into its cloud services and infiltrate thousands
of American government, corporation and think tank networks made clear that
Russia was ignoring the sanctions Mr. Biden issued after the Solar Winds hack
in January.
But it also represented what now looks
like a lasting change in Russian tactics, according to Dmitri Alperovitch, the
chairman of the research group Silverado Policy Accelerator. He noted that the
move to undermine America’s cyberspace infrastructure, rather than just hack
into individual corporate or federal targets, was “a tactical direction shift,
not a one-off operation.”
Russia has already found ways to
use Mr. Biden’s desire for what the White House refers to as a more “stable and
predictable” relationship to exact concessions from Washington.
When Victoria Nuland, a top State
Department official, sought to visit Moscow for talks at the Kremlin recently,
the Russian government did not immediately agree. Seen in Moscow as one of
Washington’s most influential Russia hawks, Ms. Nuland was on a blacklist of
people barred from entering the country.
But the Russians offered a deal. If
Washington approved a visa for a top Russian diplomat who had been unable to
enter the United States since 2019, then Ms. Nuland could come to Moscow. The
Biden administration took the offer.
Ms. Nuland’s conversations in
Moscow were described as wide ranging, but in the flurry of talks between the
United States and Russia, there are clearly areas the Kremlin does not want to
discuss: Russia’s crackdown on dissent and the treatment of the imprisoned
opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny have gone largely unaddressed, despite the
disapproval that Mr. Biden voiced on the matter this year.
While Mr. Biden will not see Mr.
Putin in person at the Group of 20 summit in Rome or at the Glasgow climate
summit, Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, said in October that another
meeting this year “in one format or another” between the two presidents was
“quite realistic.”
Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov
said on Sunday that he spoken briefly with Mr. Biden in Rome and that the
president “stressed his commitment to further contacts.”
“Biden has been very successful in
his signaling toward Russia,” said Kadri Liik, a Russia specialist at the
European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. “What Russia wants is the
great power privilege to break rules. But for that, you need rules to be there.
And like it or not the United States is still an important player among the
world’s rule setters.”
The most notable talks between
Russian and American officials have been on what the two call “strategic
stability” — a phrase that encompasses traditional arms control and the
concerns that new technology, including the use of artificial intelligence to command
weapons systems, could lead to accidental war or reduce the decision time for
leaders to avoid conflict. Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, has
led a delegation on those issues, and American officials describe them as a
“bright spot” in the relationship.
Working groups have been set up,
including one that will discuss “novel weapons” like Russia’s Poseidon, an
autonomous nuclear torpedo.
While Pentagon officials say that
China’s nuclear modernization is their main long-term threat, Russia remains
the immediate challenge. “Russia is still the most imminent threat, simply
because they have 1,550 deployed nuclear weapons,” Gen. John E. Hyten, who will
retire in a few weeks as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told
reporters on Thursday.
In other contacts, John F. Kerry,
Mr. Biden’s climate envoy, spent four days in Moscow in July. And Robert
Malley, the special envoy for Iran, held talks in Moscow in September.
Aleksei Overchuk, a Russian deputy
prime minister, met with Ms. Sherman and Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national
security adviser — talks that Mr. Overchuk described as “very good and honest”
in comments to Russian news media.
Mr. Putin, finely attuned to the
subtleties of diplomatic messaging after more than 20 years in power, welcomes
such gestures of respect. Analysts noted that he recently also sent his own
signal: Asked by an Iranian guest at a conference in October whether Mr.
Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan heralded the decline of American power, Mr.
Putin countered by praising Mr. Biden’s decision and rejecting the notion that
the chaotic departure would have a long-term effect on America’s image.
“Time will pass and everything will
fall into place, without leading to any cardinal changes,” Mr. Putin said. “The
country’s attractiveness doesn’t depend on this, but on its economic and
military might.”
Anton Troianovski reported
from Moscow, and David E. Sanger from Washington.