Russian diplomat: Biden should be held accountable for the events at Guantanamo.
Russia’s permanent representative to Vienna, in response to the US president’s recent criticism of Russian human rights, stressed that it would be better to discuss the situation at Guantanamo and US torture and human rights violations during Biden and Putin’s meeting.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s permanent representative to international organizations based in Vienna, Austria, responded to recent criticism of US President Joe Biden over the human rights situation in Russia.
In the run-up to the finalization of a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden in the coming weeks, some speculation suggests that the US president is seeking to seize the opportunity to question Russia’s human rights record.
Biden said in a statement on Sunday that he intended to pressure Putin to respect and support human rights during his meeting with him in Geneva next month.
“Isn’t it a good opportunity to ask questions about Guantanamo and the prison,” Ulyanov said in response to the president’s remarks in a message he posted on his Twitter page, sarcastically referring to the human rights situation in the United States. “Other issues of torture (from Biden meeting with Putin) should be raised?”
The Guantanamo Bay detention center was set up by former US President George W. Bush under the pretext of imprisoning suspected terrorists after the 9/11 attacks, and there have been numerous reports of inhumane treatment of detainees by US agents. Despite the fact that Bush’s successor Barack Obama promised to close the prison, the prison was closed not only during his presidency but also during the presidency of Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden.
Biden is scheduled to meet face to face with the Kremlin amid rising tensions between Russia and the United States, and Russian officials have said they do not expect progress or a miracle from the presidents’ meeting to resolve deep differences.
Referring to the June 16 meeting with Putin, the US President said: “I will meet with President (Vladimir) Putin in the next two weeks and I make it clear that we will not remain silent and will not allow him to “Abuse these rights.”
Since Biden took office, tensions between Washington and Russia have escalated over a range of issues, including accusations that Moscow is trying to interfere in the US presidential election and cyber-attacks on US government and security institutions.
The Biden administration has also imposed new sanctions on Moscow under the pretext of its role in a cyber-attack on US government and security institutions and organizations, and claims that the Russian government was involved in the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, an opposition figure to Vladimir Putin. Of course, the Russian government has dismissed all these allegations as baseless.
