Biden to meet 'worthy adversary' Putin in Geneva

U.S. President Joe Biden flew to Geneva on Tuesday where he will, for the first time since taking office, meet face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This meeting of rivals comes as relations between Washington and Moscow are at their most fraught in years.

But both leaders say they hope the summit at a Swiss villa can lead to a stable and predictable relationship between the two powers.

In Brussels, ahead of the sit-down, Biden laid out his approach to the Russian leader:

“I’m going to make clear to President Putin that there are areas where we can cooperate if he chooses.”

In an interview with NBC News, Putin held out the possibility the two nations could find areas of agreement:

"We have a bilateral relationship that has deteriorated to what is the lowest point in recent years. However, there are still matters that need a certain amount of note comparing and identification and determination of mutual positions so that issues of mutual interest can be solved more effectively to the benefit of both the United States and Russia."

Despite cautious optimism, expectations for a major breakthrough are low.

The U.S. blames Russia for election interference and cyber-attacks on American businesses.

The White House accuses the Kremlin of military intervention in Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists battle forces loyal to American allies in Kyiv.

And Biden has criticized Putin for allegedly poisoning and then jailing the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Russia adamantly denies these accusations, and Putin shrugged them off.

"We know it all well. We have been accused of all kinds of things: election interference, cyber attacks and so on. And not even once did they bother to produce any kind of evidence, just baseless accusations."

The acrimony between the sides isn’t new. The two men met a decade ago, when Biden was vice president and Putin was prime minister.

And both men belie a begrudging respect for one another.

Putin compared Biden with his predecessor:

"President Biden, of course, is radically different from Trump because he is a professional. He has spent virtually his entire adulthood in politics. He has been doing it for years."

And Biden offered this about his Russian counterpart:

“He's bright, he's tough and I found that he is a, as they say when you used to play ball, a worthy adversary.”