Putin chafes at US, criticizes response to Capitol attack

Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 4 set a tough tone for his upcoming summit with U.S. President Joe Biden, accusing Washington of trying to contain Russia and citing its response to the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as a manifestation of the West's double standards.

Speaking at an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Putin said that arms control, global conflicts, the coronavirus pandemic and climate change are among the issues he and Biden would discuss at their June 16 summit in Geneva.
"We need to find ways of looking for a settlement in our relations, which are at an extremely low level now," Putin said.
"We don't have any issues with the U.S.," he continued. "But it has an issue with us. It wants to contain our development and publicly talks about it. Economic restrictions and attempts to influence our country's domestic politics, relying on forces they consider their allies inside Russia, stem from that."

He voiced hope that the meeting will help ease tensions with Washington. Russia-U.S. ties have sunk to post-Cold War lows over Moscow's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, accusations of Russian interference in elections in the U.S. and other Western nations, and cyberattacks that U.S. officials allege had Russian origins.
Putin reiterated that Russia rejects accusations of interfering in U.S. presidential elections, and he spoke critically of the U.S. response to the Capitol attack, which took place as Congress prepared to certify that Biden had defeated then-President Donald Trump in November.

"They weren't just a crowd of robbers and rioters. Those people had come with political demands," he said.
Putin pointed out that the heavy charges against hundreds of participants in the attack were...