Biden-Putin summit is critical

Vladimir Putin’s reported decision to supply Iran with advanced satellite systems that will boost its capacity to attack Israeli and US forces across the Middle East adds significantly to the importance of Joe Biden’s summit with him on Wednesday. Supply of the powerful Kanopus-V satellite systems to Iran’s terrorist-supporting Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is another in a long line of provocations by Mr Putin. Mr Biden needs to make it clear that the US is determined to thwart a move that would give Iran’s ayatollahs the ability to monitor strategic Gulf oil refineries, activity at Israel’s military bases and movements by US troops stationed in Iraq but operating in Syria. Kanopus-V also would make it easier for Iran to hit distant targets using ballistic missiles and drones.

In a weekend interview Mr Putin sought to dismiss the deployment as “garbage”. But US intelligence believes he is well advanced with the move, which would strengthen Moscow’s alliance with Tehran just as the latter is intensifying its involvement with Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists attacking Israel. After the Group of Seven summit and meeting NATO leaders in Brussels, Mr Biden must make it clear the US will no longer indulge Mr Putin as it did under Donald Trump and Barack Obama. At a meeting with Mr Putin in 2011, Mr Biden has said, he looked at the Russian leader and told him: “I don’t think you have a soul.” In an interview in March, Mr Biden agreed with the description of Mr Putin as a “killer”. Mr Putin, infuriated, withdrew his ambassador from Washington. Further Russian aggression, such as the 2014 annexation of Crimea (when Mr Biden was vice-president) would be intolerable. The failure to respond adequately to the Crimean invasion was the low point of Western reaction to Mr Putin’s aggression. The unwillingness of the US under Mr Trump to respond to Russian aggression against Ukraine and cyber interference in US elections, government agencies and corporations also was a serious mistake. A shift in mindset is needed.

The denial of human rights in Russia, such as the treatment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and poisoning attacks on Putin adversaries in the West demand a stand. The threat Mr Putin poses was revealed in a Dutch court last week when it emerged Russia doctored satellite evidence to disguise its involvement in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, in which 38 Australian citizens and residents were among 298 people killed.