U.S. President Joe Biden's call, during which he invited Vladimir Putin for a meeting, was perceived by the Kremlin as a "tactical win” for Putin, according to three people close to the Russian leadership, as was reported by Bloomberg.
Given the rising alarm in Western capitals over the massive Russian build-up, U.S. President Joe Biden picked up the phone and called Putin on April 13, suggesting the first summit meeting between the two leaders. According to Bloomberg's sources in Moscow, the Kremlin saw its ability to force the new US administration to recognize that it needs to engage with Moscow as a tactical victory for Putin.
With this, the Kremlin believes that Joe Biden's administration is allegedly "forced to recognize" the need to engage with Moscow because of Putin’s great Ukraine gambit.
Biden’s White House had hoped to put Russia on the back-burner in order to focus on the more pressing priority of responding to China. Putin’s surprise military maneuver upended those calculations, according to a senior State Department official.
“For the U.S. and its European allies, the weeks-long crisis after Russia moved an estimated 100,000 troops with tanks, ships and warplanes to the Ukrainian border was a sobering reminder of Putin’s ability to raise the stakes in relations. Years of sanctions since his 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in Ukraine’s east have done little to force him to change direction, even as they have squeezed Russia’s stuttering economy," Bloomberg reported.