US President Joe Biden on Wednesday (local time) said he told Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during their Geneva summit that "certain critical infrastructure should be off limits to cyberattack" and expressed optimism that latter would not seek to escalate the tensions between the two nations.
"I think that the last thing he (Putin) wants now is a Cold War," Biden told the media after the meeting, adding that he during the talks had stressed that "certain critical infrastructure should be off limits to attack -- period -- by cyber or any other means."
The remark comes after a number of attacks on Western targets, including last month's ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, which shut down a major US fuel pipeline to the East Coast.
Biden and Putin have emerged from their first in-person summit and offered broad claims of good will, but it was clear that on issues ranging from cyberattacks to human rights, the two countries remain profoundly divided.
"There has been no hostility," Putin declared as he met with reporters after the summit. "On the contrary, our meeting took place in a constructive spirit," he added.
While Biden said that the tone of the entire meeting was good and positive. "I made it clear to President Putin that we will continue to raise issues of fundamental human rights," he said, adding that "I did what I came to do."
US-Russia Presidential joint statement on strategic stability following the summit said that "even in periods of tension," the two nations share goals of "ensuring predictability in the strategic sphere, reducing the risk of armed conflicts and the threat of nuclear war."This was the first meeting of US President Joe Biden in a decade with the Russian president, whom he last met when Putin was prime minister and he was serving as vice president, in March of 2011. The summit is also the first meeting between US and Russian leaders since Putin met Donald Trump in Helsinki in 2018.
( With inputs from ANI )
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