the holocaust. >> she is a grown-ass woman. >> oh, wow. >> we encourage -- we encourage members to go to the holocaust museum. >> final thoughts, willie, about what's happening right now. >> to be a fly on the wall right now inside that room for the next four or five hours with those two men. we'll get some readout, but man, to be there and to see it is president biden delivering the message that these experts and analysts have suggested he needs to. >> and from willie, joe and me and all of us in washington, that does it for us this morning. msnbc's special coverage of president biden's summit with vladimir putin continues right now. ♪♪ ♪♪ . as we come on the air this morning we are almost at that 90-minute mark in the talks

between president biden and president vladimir putin at geneva. you are looking at it live and we are ready for whatever happens next. i'm hallie jackson reporting from washington alongside my colleague ayman mohyeldin and andrea mitchell joins us. so far we have seep the two leaders officially welcomed by the swiss president outside the 18th century villa. the handshake, the walk inside, the first time president biden and president putin have been face to face in more than a decade, but they will not be one-on-one. in the room and behind closed doors, secretary of state tony blinken, and russian foreign minister sergey lavrov. at some point as you are watching with us this morning we will see more aides go in on each side. these pictures, the last we saw before they disappeared behind closed doors in the 7:00 a.m. eastern hour. >> after that -- excuse me, we will hear from both president

biden and president putin in separate solo press conferences. putin going first and then president biden. we are hoping to get some hints of what is actually being said between now and then, but here's what we know about biden's plan going into that meeting. near the top of the list, those cybersecurity and ransomware attacks that have been traced back to russia. russia's aggression in ukraine and troop movements in crimea. of course, human rights abuses, most notably the imprisonment of alexei navalny and the landing of the plane in belarus that led to the arrest of a journalist last month. >> trevor reid will also be on the agenda, two former marines being held in russian prisons and finally, the election meddling and political disinformation campaigns in this country. it is a long list. >> sure is. >> but even with all of those issues on the table both leaders are actually still hopeful that there are areas of cooperation and there are several of them. they include arms control,

climate change, a plan to combat ambitions, syria, as well as the effort to deal with the covid pandemic. >> it's a lot to get to over the next two, four, five hours as we wait for the solo press conferences, two of them after ward. andrea mitchell, let's be real about this, the news that is happening right now is being made as we speak. we don't know yet what's coming out of the summit and we know as to the way that this thing began. talk to us about what you've seen on the ground. >> first of all, the fact that there was a shoving match between the russian media trying to shut out the western and u.s. media was pretty extraordinary. that was a photo-op unlike any we've seen in any summit that i can remember because there was so much pushing and shoving it was hard for the u.s. pool to get in for what was to be a

brief camera spray and vladimir putin spoke first. he grabbed the spotlight immediately saying we hope that this will be a successful meeting and you can barely hear joe biden and as i've said outside, it's good to be meeting face to face, and then what persisted were quite a number of minutes. i didn't time it exactly, ayman and hallie, but it was quite a long time with the pushing and the shoving and you can see that tony blinken was trying to explain to the president what was going on. he's the only one in the room that had a notebook and he's a meticulous note taker and foreign approximately see adviser to president biden back when he was vice president and before that for many, many years in the senate meeting up to when he was chairman in the senate foreign relations committee back when the president was vice president meeting putin and then

prime minister when dmitri medvedev was the president in name only because putin was still pulling the strings of the russian republic. in any case, blinken knows him so well and lavrov, the very charismatic, longtime foreign minister and so interesting that in the expanded pool you will also see general verasimov and nobody from the military side of the u.s. and antonov who negotiated the start agreement. an arms control means not just nuclear arms, but cyber. >> andrea, thank you. you'll be sticking with us now for the next couple of hours for sure, and let me bring a few other folks who will provide insight on the ground. monica alba, and ben rhodes

under president obama. jeremy bash served under president obama at the dod. andrea set the scene. the wild scenario that we saw as it related to the way the summit started to the room. tell us if you're hearing anything from white house officials and sources. i know there's been some clarification about a question that president biden was asked by a member of the u.s. press and the white house seeming to try to want to put some clarity around that. >> indeed, hallie. these kinds of diplomatic dances are quite delicate and as highly choreographed and there is the unexpected and indeed that is what we saw this morning as there was the pushing and shoving between the u.s. and russian journalists trying to get into that room, and pose their questions both to president putin and to president biden. our colleague did try to ask the american president and both the russian president whether they

could trust each other and from what we could tell it appeared that biden did hear or acknowledge the question by nodding in the affirmative and the white house is pushing back quite sternly that he was acknowledging the press sternly and not responding to any singular question, but it was so chaotic in there that it was a little hard to discern and that's why these individual press conferences after the talks wrap up as many as three or four hours from now even though we're an hour and a half in will be so critical because there we will get from each side whether the two men can and do trust each other and whether there will be this verified trust and twist that president biden put on reagan's old saying and what we expect to see next will be just as fascinating. they will be expanding the delegation and the russian side has far more people coming into the room than the american side.

there will be about 14 to 16 people total with translation, of course, and we have to remember that that doubles a lot of the time here that we're talking about where the two leaders are meeting. the white house has left it a little bit open and sources tell me it is always possible that putin and biden at some point could meet one-on-one even though that's not built into the current schedule and right now even though there was a lot of speculation, things are running on time, even though we know putin is someone that runs notoriously late and likes to keep world leaders waiting and that's not at all what we have seen so far here in geneva, guys. >> we'll be parsing all of the key topics over the course of the next several hour, but i want to start with what we've seen so far and the interaction between these two men. what do you make of what we just saw and the photo opportunity of the four men sitting in the room, the body language and what appeared to be unease by vladimir putin as these questions were shouted to him in the press wrangling their way to

get in there. >> look, for putin himself there is a victory of just being on the world stage in the setting with yet another american president, given the guy that has interfered in our elections and and his chief opponent inside of russia who has continued to destabilize ukraine and we can go down the list. for him in watching him just arrive there you realize that the goal for putin is to be seen as on an equal footing with the american president and to be seen in global, vents as he has one way or another for the last few decades and accompanying sergey lavrov, a man who can look you directly in the eye, smile and lie with everything that he's saying. that's been my experience. my takeaway that's interesting about this, ayman is they began with the smaller meeting. having been in a number of meetings with vladimir putin with president obama and normally you have the different

meetings with the different officials and the different portfolios and maybe one other aide toward the end to have some sensitive conversations. what that tells me is there are so many issues that they'll want to deal with in the sensitive conversation, when you talk about cyber and when you talk about anything related to human rights and aspects of ukraine and they want to have plenty of time to have that sensitive one-on-one with just one person in the room kind of conversation before they bring in all of the other officials who will be dealing with the different components of the u.s.-russia relationship from weapons to syria and on down the list. >> jeremy, i want to talk about cyber and expanded in the larger context of arms control. the president had said verify trust, the spin on the reagan comments as monica alba pointed out. arms control is really redefined in this cyber age and how much

harder is it to verify and why should the united states, why should joe biden trust anything that vladimir putin says when he keeps lying about the cyber hacks and lies about solar winds and won't take responsibility for ransomware that takes place from his soil despite the fact that we know it happens with his knowledge, complicit, if not on his direction. so how do they even develop any kind of verification for a cyber regime? >> it's hard, andrea, and to your point, one of the rationales for this meeting is that both sides have more than 1600 deployed, strategic nuclear weapons and so for that reason and that reason alone it's important for an american president to sit down with the russian president. i think the biden team is going to this meeting with exactly the right perspective. we want a stable relationship with russia. it's not good, it's not bad and we want to manage the down side of risk and you saw from the

opening shots there it's a very businesslike atmosphere and there are not a lot of smiles and back slapping and there is a serious agenda and to your point, one of the issues are a cyber attack and whereas nuclear weapons is undeniably an apparatus of the state. cyber attacks lives more in the shadows and it's tolerated by the russian federation, in some cases encouraged by it. the one area where biden will have to be crystal clear with respect to election interference and it's a form of cyber attack and a form of using electronic, digital, internet-based weapons to go after them and harm our democracy and the larger issue this week is the contrast between democracy and autocracy and it's an important signal that the biden administration is being sense this week which is that democracy will prevail over a putin or xi jinping in china. >> jeremy, stand by for a second, i want to bring in --

oh, go ahead, andrea. >> yeah, i just wanted to follow up quickly on cyber in terms of how dangerous it could be. we talk about election interference and that is profoundly dangerous and even though there are international norms, treaties, and storms on cyber and you don't attack energy, infrastructure and the like and it could reach the point of attacking the controls and the fail saves for nuclear weapons. >> absolutely. all of our data, all of our communications and all of our critical infrastructure is at risk from cyber attacks and we've learned in the colonial pipeline that our defenses aren't strong enough and we have to develop the capability to hold our risk, some of russia's cyber assets so that we can increase deterrence. this is hard, andrea. i'm not going to pretend ooh easy and this is a mandate from the biden administration which

is to increase to some extent our offensive capability. >> jeremy, thanks. senior international correspondent keir simmons is standing by. i bring you in the conversation because you have been in moscow with a front-row seat with that exclusive interview with vladimir putin over last 48, 72 hours. he is someone that can get testy and he can engage in what aboutism and get combative and joe biden often leads with empathy, right? very different styles, very different leaders. talk about how you expect this to go down and frankly, keir, what i'm fascinated by how the russians are already spinning this. we are 90 minutes in and we're about to hit that mark and you have the pro-kremlin media putting their take on this. >> that's right, hallie, one of the pro-kremlin, russian channels is actually running a

timer right now for how long the meeting is going to take place. i think that's really interesting, and i think it's an interesting reflection that they and already the kremlin is suggesting that the meeting and the spokesman for vladimir putin and dmitri is saying that the meeting can go over in four or five years and it's possible that if the meeting does run longer that that will be portrayed here as a further success for president putin, if you like that they really got down and negotiated and he was able to spend as much time as he needed with the american president and it started on time, at the same time and it's interesting in terms of the mentality that vladimir putin is coming at this with, and i think it's fascinating to just share with you the words from president putin when he was sitting next to president biden earlier, and he addressed

president biden and said mr. president, i want to thank you for the initiative in today's meeting and i know you've had a long journey and a lot to work on. nevertheless, mr. biden said there are issues that need to be discussed at the highest level and i hope our meeting will be productive. that is clearly a constructive way for president putin to frame the beginning of this meeting, fascinating, too, to see that president biden did not respond, did not engage. i don't know whether he actually had the translation of what president putin was saying, but i think it's important because, of course, the biden administration team had gained this out and as you saw in my interview, once you start discussing with president putin then you have the putin word game, and i think president biden would have wanted to save that for the closed meeting away from the cameras the same way that he doesn't want to have that news conference alongside president putin after the

summit, but they'll have separate news conferences. >> ben, as you know probably better than anyone having been in similar meetings throughout your time. vladimir putin will probably run out the clock on the biden presidency and he's been through many american presidents before. what does president biden need to do to say and convince vladimir putin that he means business and that may have talked a big game to russia and not necessarily followed through on some of the key sticking points between the two countries. >> i think that's right, ayman, in the meeting itself putin runs out the clock and there's a lot of presentations, i'm sure whenever biden says something about ukraine and cyber and putin has a long speech prepared about how the united states is responsible for those issues and look, the first time we saw vladimir putin with the american president was with george w. bush. he's been around the block. he's seen american presidents come and go.

he's rigged the system inside of his own country right now where his term basically extends as long as he wants it to be, and so what he will want and the danger for the biden team is putin will want to come out of this summit, and it is business as usual and we have normalized relations with the americans and this is a businesslike relations and it is proof that russia is a super power on par with america, and that's very much what he will want to portray. the challenge for the biden team is putin wants to normalize things because he's the person who is the leading opposition. he's the person sponsoring a belarus regime that hijacked an airliner so they could arrest someone. putin is the one that is harboring cyber criminals, ransomware attacks on the united states. so the biden team has to make clear that no, this is not normal. until you take action to curb these cyber attacks or we'll do it ourselves, unless you take

action to de-escalate tensions in ukraine things are not going to return to normal. that will be the attention and what biden will do in addition to laying down our positions on these issues is to deliver warnings on the cyber side. if you don't rein in these cyber attacks coming from within cyber's borders and a lot of us are skeptical that those attacks could take place and they're not a tacit approval by the kremlin. there will be offensive cyber capabilities that the united states can deploy in russia and he'll have to be ambiguous about this and we won't know the outcome of the summit and it will take time to assess whether or not russia is continuing its provocations and whether or not the biden team is escalating those provocations. i think what the biden team wants is some floor under this relationship. it's not constant tit for tat,

and othe issues like nuclear weapons or syria, biden wants to demonstrate he delivered some tough messages and he's willing to follow through on behalf of american interest and values whereas putin will come out and say i'm on equal footing here with the biggest super power in the world and everything's fine. >> and i was going to say to your point very quickly, i've been tracking the russian journalists on the ground. one of them noted that president biden was nine minutes late and kept russian president waiting. thanks to all of you and coming up, we have a lot more continuing coverage from geneva, the high stakes summit, 90 minutes into it and we'll have more questions. one of that being, what does this mean for the president's agenda. we'll ask senator tim kane from virginia. former secretary of state hillary clinton that was at the top of the presidential ticket

that included senator kane spoke about what she thinks president biden's goal is for today. watch. >> joe biden has learned a lot, as we all have, and remember, putin made it his mission to deny me the presidency in part because, you know, i did raise issues that were uncomfortable with him. i did speak out about the oppression and frankly, the rigged elections in russia. that's what joe biden gets and that's why he's behind closed doors right now trying to get the measure of where putin is today. and not only make new discoveries, but get there faster, with better outcomes. with app, cloud and anywhere workspace solutions, vmware helps companies navigate change-- meeting them where they are, and getting them where they want to be. faster.

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♪♪ welcome back, everyone. we are continuing our live coverage of the joe biden-vladimir putin summit taking place in geneva. a high-stakes summit. you almost think four or five hours will not be enough to discuss everything we outlined. >> half of that time is taken up with the translation and the discussion back and forth. this is a long list. we are going to get through presumably a good deal with it and we'll find out where things stand potentially some time in the next little bit and that is because we may or may not see what it's like in the room when this meeting goes from the four of these key folks, president biden, president putin, lavrov, and as long as things were listed on the schedules and that's what things were right now and what was not on paper

was the message that president biden previewed and he'll be giving to putin. part of it, tough talks on cybersecurity, election meddling and part of it as the president put it where we can cooperate if putin chooses, promising to draw some red lines and promising to make clear there will be a response where putin has acted in the way he has in the past. tim kaine in virginia, member of the foreign relations committee and thank you for being back on our show and special coverage. >> absolutely. very important topic. you have been glued to the television watching these unfold as we see the live pictures come in. what stands out to you so far as we are getting closer to the two-hour mark of this discussion? >> well, it is an important meeting, and i think president biden set the right tone. he says what we want is stability and predictability. this is not about friendship and it's not about a warm relationship. we do not trust vladimir putin

and we're not going to trust him. he's an authoritarian thug, but there are areas where russia and the united states have common interests reducing terrorism. neither russia or the united states want iran to get a nuclear weapon and the obama-biden administration got russia and other nations to effectively stop the iranian quest to stop nuclear weapons. we have to identify those and make clear that when russia and it's not russia, it's really putin and his henchmen do bad things there will be a response. >> to that point, senator, it's something that the president said before he left to russia saying we will respond in kind. that is the message he wants to say and there is concern that that may put america directly in a confrontational point with russia when it comes to issues of cybersecurity. is that something that you're prepared, that congress should be prepared to undertake a direct confrontation with russia when it comes to cyber attacks

and cyber offenses and you know, beef up or step up the sanctions against russian individuals who may be involved in these cyber crimes? >> i think we have to be ready and willing to do that, and vladimir putin certainly understands our capacity is much greater than russia's capacity. so far, russia's minimal -- lesser capacity, they've been more willing to use it in mischievous ways and we, as a civilized nation trying to do things right are less forward leaning in using some of these tactics to respond or to put them back on their heels. we have to be ready to do it, but i will say this. this is all against the backdrop of the discussions that the president has been having with european allies this week. what's been the main point of discussion has been china, and we can't take our eye off that ball. china is the competitor and adversary, diplomatic, humanitarian, military, and russia poses some military

mischief threats and they're not an economic competitor, they're not a diplomatic competitor and not a competitor for humanitarian causes around the globe. they're not. so we can't take our eye off the ball. we just have to try to create a stable and predictable relationship on russia on the items where we have common interests. >> and senator, it's andrea mitchell in geneva. >> andry a great. >> it's good to talk to you. thanks for being here. in terms of arms control you are such an expert on all of the foreign policy. arms control now encompassing cyber and all of the complexity of verify anything kind of cyber agreements. there's the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty that expires in five years. some of the people in the room include general garasimov, and they also have antonov who negotiated the new s.t.a.r.t. agreement. >> right. >> it may be that they do want

to focus and take a deep dive on these issues whereas we don't have economic competition with russia. we certainly have strategic competition with russia as well as interests in getting some diplomatic talks started in syria where they are burdened by this ongoing war after ten years and they want to get some relief. >> i think, andrea, you do point out some common areas. look, it was good news that president biden early in his 10 ire decided we want to xtend the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty because it was set to expire and both the u.s. and russia realized it was in our interest to do that. we'd like to get china to be part of that treaty over time. so both nations said whatever our feelings about the state of the relationship, this is a positive. syria is a good example. there is intense need that remains for delivery of humanitarian assistance into

syria for people in the northeast and northwest syria and russia can be a key part of that. why wouldn't they want to be a key part of that, so the battle against terrorism. russia deals with its own terrorist challenges and many russians end up becoming foreign fighters in the middle east connected with isis and others. they want to stop that and we do, too. so we have to stand strong against russian misbehavior, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look carefully in these areas with the nuclear deal with iran, russia, and we don't do a lot of diplomatic deals where we have russia and china working together with us and getting back into that improves the chance for better dialogue on the next issue that comes up. >> senator, i have to let you and our viewers know that we do have a development now from geneva, that first session with vladimir putin and president biden has wrapped up. a white house official telling

reporters there that it ended -- i'm looking at my clock, about 15 minutes ago. it went up about 9:17 eastern time and 3:17 geneva time. total an hour and 33 minutes for this discussion for president biden and president putin and sergey lavrov and tony blinken. they are moving into the expanded session. i know you know this, senator, but for folks at home, this is when you will see more people, more aides come in and we were talking with ben rhodes and jeremy bash about how often the sensitive issues get worked out in session one with the first, more closed session and then you have other issues that are on the agenda in the broader session, and before i let you go, listen, let's be real. we're doing some tea leaf reading here. what does an hour and 33 minutes mean? what could they have really done? how much progress was made?

i know there was speculation and i wonder your initial thought on that and secondarily as we talk about the domestic piece of this, too, some of the republicans who have criticized president biden before knowing the outcome of this for the way that he has conducted his relationship with vladimir putin so far and the storyline around this summit has developed. >> on the republican critique, i'm glad we finally got a president who doesn't cozy up to the dictator vladimir putin. under donald trump he would cozy up to putin and pour cold water on our european allies. joe biden rightly is reversing that. we are linking arms with our european allies and he is expressing the right level of skepticism about putin as an individual. one of the things we did right before this summit was we hit belarus with very tough sanctions for violating international law to target a political opponent. you've got to believe that

vladimir putin completely understood what that was about. it was about belarus, but it was also about, hey, if you violate international law to target political opponents under the biden administration you will not have a president who will shrug about it and you will have one who will take stiff action. >> senator tim kaine, we are appreciative of your time this morning. >> absolutely. >> thank you, ayman. let's head to switzerland and bring in nbc's mike menially outside the summit in geneva. our first update and our first reading from the white house. 90 minutes in and that first small group meeting has now concluded. >> yeah. that's right, ayman. 93 minutes in total. i'm not sure if you had the over or the under on that. >> i had the over, mike. i'll be honest. i thought it was going to be longer than that, if you look at the breadth and the depth of what they had to discuss. >> that's right, hallie. what's interesting about this and the time i've spent covering

biden over the years including the trips that i followed him along for oversea, i think the one-on-one conversation was so important for him with the colleagues of tony blinken and sergey lavrov, and as we head into the summit the president has talked to some extent under the radar about the vulnerabilities of russia, the fact that as he put it recently, they're a second-rate military power and yes, they have incredible capabilities and we talk about the strength and the degree to which they've been disruptive not just here in the u.s., but across the world, but the president has a keen sense for things that don't often get appreciated and there are some messages he wanted to send directly to the president without the larger group alongside of him for, and now i think they will be able to cover more ground. there was an event that the president did as a private citizen two years ago where he talked about one specific topic which was corruption and there was a discussion to which the

u.s. could make things more difficult as putin does everything he can do to clamp down on the opposition and we see what has happened to alexei navalny, and there were tools that then private citizen joe biden might be on the table and what he said, was you deliver the message about that privately. you see how putin responds and then if he doesn't move in a direction, then you sort of pull the trigger and make it more public. so i think that's what's the interesting thing to observe here as this first session has ended and we know the issues that need to discuss that go well beyond just the face to face encounter, but there's another interesting dynamic here i want to share, as well. when he met for the first time with xi jinping and he spoke directly about the value of a one-on-one direct face to face meeting which is in a relationship as he put it in, as complex as the u.s. china relationship and he wanted to

make sure there was nothing lost in translation and nothing lost in the phone dynamics and nothing more important than having face to face, direct conversation and yes, it was with their colleagues, as well and the smaller group was first and now we'll see the larger group come in and get to the broader, substantive agenda. >> pull back the curtain for folks. number one and this is more of a logistical thing, but is there any expectation given the way this morning has gone with the reporters traveling with the president being pulled unexpectedly into rooms, with the jockeying and might we get playback images of the expanded bilateral meeting. is that your expectation at all and secondarily, what we've heard from the white house so far has been the clarification on a member that one of the members of the press pool asked specifically with president

biden. she said she was looking at president biden in the eye and asked can you trust president putin. he was nodding his head generally in the direction of the press. what do you make of that? why such an effort to make sure they're working to clarify that particular piece of information? >> i'll start with your first question and just explain a little bit about the lay of the land here. i'm a short walk, maybe five minutes away from the villa la grange. >> you're on the ground, mike, right? i want to be clear. you're there. >> yeah. i had as close to a front-row seat as you could get during the arrivals and just a short distance from the entrances and they have what's called a hold, for the smaller, protected pool and that is so that they can bring them in in a hurry if they decide they want to bring in the still photographers and the cameras and the print reporters as well. we shouldn't rule anything out.

they've been very careful about the optics and the dynamics and famous last words and in terms of the real push and pull and what we saw in terms of the white house being very quick to clarify what our own colleague saw and asked the president directly. i think it speaks to the very difficulty of these moments. i saw the big scrum, the big fight that was happening outside as the u.s. delegation was trying to make sure only the small number of both russian and u.s. media were being allowed in and there were a lot of others especially on the russian side who were trying to sneak their way in and what resulted in that was a chaotic scene inside and i know there was a lot of jostling and commotion, frankly and having been part of the pool on this trip, as well and seeing this play out myself, there were times that the president are, with so many reporters and so much jostling around and trying to shout questions at him just couldn't understand what the questions were and what the white house is saying here is that he was acknowledging the

press and acknowledging the question and he wasn't necessarily answering it. this is an unanswerable question. maybe it will be for the -- >> only president biden. >> but what's significant if the president was answering in the affirmative that he did trust vladimir putin it would be a change and i would recall 20 years ago the late great tim russert asked then-senator joe biden on "meet the press" in 2001. putin had only been president for a year and he asked him point blank, do you think vladimir putin is trustworthy and then-senator biden said no. i seriously doubt that that has changed and again, the white house trying to clarify he was not answering in the affirmative. they were simply acknowledging the reporters in the room. >> i just want to break in for just a second and say there's an extraordinary scene, there is a tank right below us on the

street just rolling down the street here in the city as the swiss federation president when the first welcome said, a tank. there's a woman -- military in the tank and they've just been patrolling up and down in the street right below us and we're not -- we're in the opposite side of the lake, of course. it's quite remarkable that this city -- >> the level of security. >> you don't often see -- on the lakeside of geneva which is one of the most refined, sophisticated city anywhere in the world to see something like this, i don't think it's ever been seen before. in any case -- we're trying to get you some stills because our cameras. >> we're watching it live, andrea. >> wait one second. i think you've got it. our other camera, if we can switch to our -- you got it. >> certainly, it speaks to the security levels that are in place here, and the difficulty in movements that some have had

in geneva, and you've experienced that and the nature of this, this is so closely watched. around the world, right? this is not the u.s.-russia thing and there are so many other stakeholders who are keeping such a close look at what comes out of this biden-putin summit and no surprise that the security is incredibly tight there, andrea. >> exactly. >> mike, such a wonderful biden watcher for so many decades, you've seen it all and remembering the tim russert question from "meet the press." how important is it for joe biden to show how tough he can be and do you think he's at a disadvantage? i know the conventional thinking is that he comes second. in talking to experts here, they believe that is a disadvantage because vladimir putin at a news conference will come out and give the russian talking points and is an old debater and he will be able to lay out all

kinds of false statements about america, what aboutism and all of the rest that he tried to get away with and couldn't with our keir simmons. and joe biden, instead of stating what he wants to be the american positions and his takeaways and he's spent a considerable amount of time rebutting secondarily rebutting what vladimir putin has said and that ought to be at the top of his agenda, so yes, he's batting cleanup and at the same time he doesn't get the first word in. >> andrea there was a line that biden offered very often during the campaign which is that donald trump didn't want him to be the democratic nominee and vladimir putin didn't want him to be the president. part of that he vowed in a foreign policy speech earlier in the campaign, no more charlottesvilles and no more hell sinkies and there was want going to be another press conference and obviously,

there's risk in not being the first word and that's the final word in having him go second, andrea. >> all right. our thanks to mike in switzerland. keep an eye on all things moving for us. two things bound to come up as this continues. cyber attacks targeting our food, our fuel supplies and many of those attacks being traced back to russia just weeks after an intelligence committee said putin tried to interfere in our elections and it was something both spoke about in the days leading up to the meetings. watch. >> we have been accused of all kinds of things, election interference, cyber attacks and so on and so forth and not once, not once, not one time did they bother to produce any kind of evidence or proof. >> if he chooses not to cooperate and acts in a way that

he has in the past relative to cybersecurity and some other activities then we will respond. >> all right. let's unpack all of this with michelle floy in the obama at minh administration and michelle, let me start with cybersecurity and it is something people are tracking closely and we talk about american power in the military spaces being unrivalled and when it comes to the cyberworld, america is a little bit more vulnerable on what we can do to russian actors held in russia. what is your assessment of what our offensive capabilities are, and what our defensive capabilities are. >> so cyber is going to be one of the key topics of this conversation. i imagine in the private

meeting, president biden was very clear of unacceptable behavior in the cyber domain, and because we are a connected society it gives the russians and others, the chinese and others a very broad and wide attack surface and there are all kinds of vulnerabilities that we use and we saw with solar winds using suppliers and vendors to come in the back door and proliferate through private sector and government systems. i think the real concern that i have right now with russian behavior is they're using and allowing criminal elements on russian soil to attack our critical infrastructure. we saw the colonial pipeline hack. we've seen hacks against hospitals. these are things that could -- that are truly acceptable and plausible, and we know nothing of it, but we know that inside the russian system there is basically a deal struck where if

cyber criminals agree not to attack russia they're sort of given freehand to do their business from russia and occasionally used by the state to conduct attacks so the state has deniability. so this is a serious problem, and i imagine this was a main topic for the private session between president biden and president putin. in terms of our defenses, thanks to private sector companies like fire eye and other, we have a lot of great, defensive technologies and the problem is adoption. we don't have universal adoption across the private sector and critical infrastructure to make sure we're using our best defensive capabilities and of course, you've seen the government develop more offensive capability to come back at russia when they need to and we saw that in response to the anticipated hacking of the american congressional election process which actually didn't occur because of some of the actions that were taken by the

u.s. cyber command in advance. >> and john, you know how vulnerable we were from solar winds. the government didn't diagnose it. you guys did, and the fact that we didn't know about it and couldn't call it out doesn't that really show how much we have to do if it's the private sector that's involved, it has to be voluntary by these corporations, not required and not mandated by the government. >> yeah. like michelle said, there's a lot of attack surface that we have to worry about. you know, we are offensively very good because we are an advanced, technologically advanced, complex society and the down side to that is that we are an advanced complex society and there are weaknesses that they can take advantage of. these ransomware operators are bringing the a game in a lot of cases and they are looking for sort of low-hanging fruit, but

even if we advanced to a certain degree, we're talking about $20 million and $40 million ransoms here. if you are an organization likely to pay you have a $40 million bounty on your head and that means a lot of players who have a lot of capability are allowed to go after you and then we see, of course, the solar wind stuff and this was extremely advanced, highly sophisticated and it is moving through our supply chains and it is another problem that we'll really have to get a hold of. >> michelle, quickly. this is something ayman and i were talking about just a minute ago. what do you make that the u.s. defense secretary is not there. russia is bringing military officials here? >> you know, i think that i don't know the reason behind that -- that -- that choice, but i think that as they move to the broader session they're probably going to focus more on areas of potential cooperation and so

they probably brought the experts they thought they needed for that. there is a piece of that that could be about future stability talks that could deal with nuclear weapons, broader cyber and space issues. obviously iran trying to push iran into the nuclear agreement. >> thank you to both of you, much appreciated. >> and the summit comes with the backdrop of breaking news in the middle east after israel launched air strikes overnight. israel's military say incendiary balloons were sent in coming after a march in jerusalem with jews chanting death to arabs. it comes after a week when

israel launched strikes. we know it will be watched very closely for both president joe biden and vladimir putin. two country that's have a lot of interest in the middle east. let's get straight to kelly on the ground there in tel aviv. bring us up to speed on what is happening there. what are we seeing play out there and what are we seeing in switzerland? >> just in terms of the tensions here on the ground, the temperature is raised today. it is a different feel than it was yesterday before that ultra nationalist march that paraded through jerusalem yesterday. tensions are clearly higher. you had an incident in the west bank earlier today where apal stin -- where a palestinian woman was low kaled. they say she tried to ram

soldiers with her car and got out with a knife when they open fired. and more fires are breaking out on the border of gaza. they say it was caused again by more of these arson balloons. there are reports in arab media that the egyptian mediators in this month old cease fire have been talking to hamas and jihad groups. they're trying to call attention to them and get them not to respond, and they received assurances from both groups they don't want to escalate. it is very tense on the ground here, and the smallest provocation could really enflame things. it could blow things up into a much bigger incident, amon. >> kelly in tel aviv.

andrea, i know you have a quick question, too. >> i was there as you know, we were both there the week before last, it seems from my recollection that using air strikes against these balloons that are dropping flame throwing bombs, is very an aggressive action. not the kind of response, especially at this moment, did you feel it was an escalation? how much of it is a statement by the new coalition they have to be taken seriously. >> i think that is a huge part of this, andrea. there is a new government in

place. you have naftali bennet. he is the leader now and netanyahu vowed to bring the government down and he said he will do anything to destabilize this coalition. there is a sense among the new government that they have to show that they will not be bullied by hamas. that they will not back down in the face of threats by hamas. air strikes seem to be an over step in terms of a response to incendiary balloons. and they did not make statements why they chose to strike these bases and they said there is no injuries involved. they have to show they're strong for internal politics as much as anything. >> kelly, thank you for that. andrea, stand by. i know we want to bring in a few more folks here. >> let's bring in richard engel.

putin wants the u.s. to stay away nch either europe. russia is making inroads in places like syria and central africa. >> i don't see russia as making significant inroads. the big story has been nato enlargement up to russia's borders. ukraine pushing so heavily for the plan, and the united states saying not sure. they have gone to a revolution that is towards mmoscow.

pro-western president s charge, in central asia the chinese are dominating. everywhere in the world russiad. they have nuclear weapons they can't use and cyber capabilities that they can, but they're a power in very serious decline, and this is something they desperately needed if they're showcasing it back at home saying look, we're still a super power, but they're not. thank you for that perspective. richard, we want to draw you into our next hour of coverage. we are going to be here live with you alongside watching all of this coverage, live from geneva as the second part of this discussion between these two leaders, what's called the expanded bilateral is in session as we speak. our continuing coverage goes on right here after the break. on right here after the break get outta here. everybody's a skeptic.

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president