US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin shook hands in Geneva on Wednesday at the start of their first summit, with tensions at their highest in years, news agency AFP reported. The summit has now concluded, said the White House, nearly four hours after it began.

The two of them shook hands after standing with their host, Swiss President Guy Parmelin, outside the La Grange villa overlooking Lake Geneva, where they are set to meet for up to five hours.

Per AFP, Biden started the meeting with Putin by saying, “always better to meet face to face.”

Putin, on the other hand, said that he hopes the “meeting will be productive”.

The choice of Geneva recalls the Cold War summit between former US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the Swiss City in 1985.

The choice of Geneva, following long US-Russian negotiations, recalls the Cold War summit between US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the Swiss city in 1985.

From cyberattacks on American entities and meddling in the last two US presidential elections, to human rights violations and aggression against Ukraine and other European countries, Washington’s list of allegations against the Kremlin runs long and these are on the agenda, AFP reported.

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Putin, however, came to the summit arguing that Moscow is simply challenging US hegemony — part of a bid to promote a so-called “multi-polar” world that has seen Russia draw close with the US’s arguably even more powerful adversary China.

Ahead of the meet, Biden had said that his main goal will be to simply establish clear “red lines” for what the White House will no longer tolerate from Moscow.

“I’m not looking for conflict,” he said in Brussels after the NATO summit, but “we will respond if Russia continues its harmful activities”.

Biden, who had previously characterised Putin as a “killer”, upgraded the Russian leader to a “tough” and “worthy adversary”.

Going into the summit, Biden has emphasised that he has the backing of his Western partners.

Russia was one of the top topics at the NATO summit in Brussels, where the defence alliance warned that Russian military build-ups on the edge of eastern Europe “increasingly threaten the security of the Euro-Atlantic area and contribute to instability along NATO borders and beyond”.

But for all the rhetoric, the White House and Kremlin both say they are open to doing business in a limited way.

However, unlike in 2018, when Donald Trump met Putin in Helsinki, there will be no joint press conference at the end.