ANALYSIS: TRUE. There Is No Way Joe Biden Should Have A Summit With Vladimir Putin.

The Administration says the summit is intended to restore “stability to the US-Russia relationship.” But the meeting comes after a slew of Russian cyber intrusions and conspicuously little U.S. response. Not only is the meeting unlikely to produce results, but it also risks bolstering Putin’s image within Russia and on the world stage.

The list of recent Russian misdeeds is lengthy. It includes the Kremlin’s attempts to influence U.S. elections and Russian hackers’ disruptions of U.S. energy infrastructure. Elsewhere, Russia has engaged in poisoning activist Alexei Navalny, Black Sea bullying, and challenging the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

To say that US-Russian relations are not congenial is an understatement. Russian officials have publicly stated that relations are worse than during the Cold War. As if to prove its hostility, the Kremlin hacked USAID just days after Secretary of State Tony Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, met to discuss cooperation on issues of global stability.

Despite these provocations, Biden offered Putin a gift: the upcoming summit.

Both men’s summit appearances are mostly for domestic consumption, but only one will get what he want out of it.