The long-anticipated first summit between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin was held in Geneva last week. Tokyo’s initial reaction was rather unnoteworthy, partly because the meeting ended at midnight Japan time.
In fact, an initial report written in Japanese, for lack of anything better to write about, noted that the Russian leader uncharacteristically did not make his American counterpart wait and actually showed up on time.
In Washington, by contrast, the meeting between the U.S. and Russian leaders was dubbed by some as “historic,” with many commentators contrasting the much-criticized meeting between then-U.S. President Donald Trump and the Russian leader in 2018.