Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a new interview, said Russia's relationship with the United States has “deteriorated to its lowest point” in recent years, while noting that President Joe Biden is “radically different” from his predecessor.

“We have a bilateral relationship that has deteriorated to its lowest point in recent years,” Putin told NBC News' Keir Simmons, in a preview that aired Friday night.

When asked how he compares Biden to former President Donald Trump, Putin started by praising Trump as an “extraordinary, talented individual,” and someone who didn’t come from the standard U.S. political establishment.

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Would you like to take a long walk on a beach with Justin Trudeau? He’s free tomorrow at 6 a.m. in Carbis Bay, Cornwall. Must be willing to share him with security detail.

At least Trudeau knew where he was when he went for his morning run Friday: Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi was overhead asking Boris Johnson in front of the cameras: “Is this Land’s End?” — a landmark 20 miles away.

It’s fair to say that the serious work of Day 1 of the G-7 summit fell a bit flat. A crowd ranging from UNICEF to Tony Blair thinks the plan for one billion donated vaccine doses in 2021 and 2022 is too little and too slow.

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Speaking abroad for the first time as president, Joe Biden on Wednesday elicited cheers for vowing to get tough on Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He told U.S. troops at a British airbase that he planned to “meet with Mr. Putin, to let him know what I want him to know.” The service members exploded into applause for what they hailed as a tough message to a menacing adversary.

Was Biden’s message really all that “tough?” After all, what he was calling for—a meeting to talk with the Russian leader—is practically the definition of diplomacy and dialogue, which Biden has advocated since April. In the same speech, Biden repeated his goal of a more “stable and predictable relationship” with Russia, which some commentators believe is an overly soft approach, especially after Putin’s recent crackdown on Alexei Navalny’s organization and the “state-sponsored hijacking” of a civilian aircraft by the pro-Kremlin regime in Belarus.

Yet the fact is, the cheering troops are right: Biden is being tough on Putin, but not just because he’s saying the right things. When it comes to the difficult, high-stakes U.S.-Russia relationship, toughness doesn’t mean refusing to talk to the other side, even when they’ve engaged in bad behavior. American presidents over the years have shown that successfully managing this relationship demands three different kinds of toughness: talking tough, toughing it out, and hanging tough. Though they can be easily overshadowed by the political theater of U.S.-Russia conflict, these three kinds of toughness are essential foundations for any communication between Washington and Moscow to bear fruit.

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President Joe Biden is in Europe on his first big trip, starting today with the G-7 summit, and we’ve got reporters stationed in six of the G-7 countries (plus Brussels) following every move. For the next five days, I’m going to be your host, interviewing POLITICO reporters on both sides of the pond on the most important issues, the contentious policy, the inside gossip, the bureaucratic nightmares of staging a pandemic gathering, and everything in between.

Join us for a roundup to start each morning, and takeaways in the afternoon to wrap the day’s events.

The U.S. wants pragmatic engagement from Europe — after working for months to reset the tone of the trans-Atlantic relationship — to present a united front to Russia and China. European leaders have welcomed Biden’s spirit of multilateral engagement: but stark policy differences remain. European diplomats and officials tell us that they’re skeptical of a bipartisan U.S. commitment to a stable and roughly equal trans-Atlantic relationship.

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“Read-outs” of presidential conversations with world leaders are hardly literary affairs. They usually consist of confirmation that the discussion took place and a short summary of the conversation in a few clipped sentences. And, like everything else in Washington, read-outs are part of a game that journalists, analysts and online commentators play to divine what was actually said, the rapport between leaders and the state of bilateral relations between the United States and the country whose president, prime minister or king was on the other end of the line.

Turkey-watchers inside the Beltway are eagerly awaiting reports from Monday’s planned conversation between President Joe Biden and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels. After the two leaders’ first phone call in April, the frostiness between the NATO allies jumped from the page of the two-sentence readout. It didn’t help that Biden was placing the call to warn Erdogan that the White House would be recognizing the 1915 Armenian Genocide, a step Turkey has vehemently opposed for decades.

Biden’s decision to recognize the genocide, and his administration’s overall willingness to be tougher on Turkey, heightens the drama surrounding Monday’s highly anticipated meeting. Ankara’s relations with the United States, Europe and NATO have been on the skids for nearly five years, as Turkey has flexed its muscles by buying Russian weaponry, menaced NATO allies in the Eastern Mediterranean and cracked down on domestic opponents in a wave of repression. There is a growing sense inside the Beltway that official Washington has finally had enough with the Turkish government.

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China will dominate discussion during President Joe Biden’s first foreign trip, as the G-7 summit kicks off Friday. And that’s exactly what he wants.

The Communist-led country isn’t a member of the club of rich democracies established in 1975. But the leaders assembled in Cornwall, England, will spend much of their time discussing how to confront its growing influence.

During the meeting, the leaders will unveil an infrastructure lending program for developing nations intended to counter China’s aggressive debt diplomacy. They’ll also discuss ways to extract production lines for crucial industries, like pharmaceuticals and computer chips, from China. And they’ll seek to unite their economies while isolating Beijing’s state-led model by signing a new trade and technology agreement and discussing ways to combat China’s massive dominance in steel and aluminum production.

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As the United States watches its Covid-19 rates decline, the next looming challenge will be fighting the disease in the rest of the world, where new variants are spreading and could continue to emerge, and the pandemic may dig in for years. To fight the virus overseas, President Joe Biden has just announced a plan at this week’s G7 Summit to donate 500 million vaccine doses to mostly lower-income countries. This pledge should make Americans proud.

As big as that number is, however, it is only a down payment on the long-term effort to stamp out the pandemic globally. Of roughly 7.8 billion people, around 85 percent are not yet fully vaccinated. As the administration gears up to help with the daunting challenge of vaccinating the world, there’s a model that could point a way forward: the American-led post-World War II famine relief program. It’s a story of bipartisan cooperation, and it involves the return from political exile of an unexpected hero: Herbert Hoover.

The food shortage after the war was dire. As Winston Churchill said in his “Iron Curtain” speech, “famine stalk[ed] the earth.” The U.S. was one of a few countries with a mostly intact economy and a surplus of food. The task then was to get that lifesaving good in mouths. Now, it’s to get shots in arms, and America has the opportunity to become the vaccine breadbasket of the globe.

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President Joe Biden on Thursday formally announced U.S. plans to procure and donate 500 million Covid-19 vaccine doses while making his first overseas trip, as part of a speech steeped in the imagery of World War II and other eras defined by their need for urgent collective action.

“This is a monumental commitment by the American people,” Biden said in St. Ives, England. “We’re a nation full of people who step up in times of need to help our fellow human beings, both at home and abroad. We’re not perfect, but we step up.”

Vaccines procured as part of this effort will begin being sent out in August, with roughly 200 million doses expected to be delivered by the end of the year, Biden said.

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President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promoted their efforts to strengthen the U.S.-U.K. alliance in a joint statement released after their bilateral meeting on Thursday — Biden’s first overseas summit with a foreign leader since assuming office.

According to the statement, the 90-minute session focused on democracy, human rights and multilateralism; defense and security; science and technology; trade and prosperity; climate and nature; health; and the shared commitment to Northern Ireland.

Biden and Johnson laid out their “global vision” in an updated version of the Atlantic Charter of 1941, the agreement authorized by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill that established a set of post-war objectives for the two countries’ relationship.

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There may be toasted marshmallows and firepits awaiting President Joe Biden and his fellow leaders on the beaches of Cornwall during this weekend’s G-7 leaders summit, but don’t expect them to be singing "Kumbaya."

With the Biden administration crowing that “America is back” and looking to bask in applause for resetting the transatlantic relationship onto a positive path, European leaders aren’t quite ready to start clapping. They’re expecting proof that America is in it for the long haul, and are already steeling themselves for Washington’s next departure from the uneasy transatlantic marriage.

POLITICO interviewed more than a dozen prime ministers, ministers, diplomats and other officials to find out what they think about Biden and his team, and where they see Europe as fitting into the new administration’s priorities. The recurring theme: concern about perceived gaps between the administration’s rhetoric and its actions toward Europe.

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BRUSSELS — Joe Biden arrived in Europe this week with a very different image than that of his preening predecessor, Donald Trump, but there’s one big issue on which — rhetoric aside — the two men are aligned: the China challenge.

Over the coming week of summits, however, Biden will have a tough sell to get Europe on board with a united front against China, as leading European countries remain skeptical of siding with America to confront Beijing.

In particular, Biden will have to find the right balance with French President Emmanuel Macron, whose main diplomatic guiding principle is for Europe to craft its own China policy in the spirit of “strategic autonomy” instead of following the U.S. lead.

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Joe Biden will head to Europe for his first overseas trip as president, the White House announced on Friday, traveling in mid-June to the United Kingdom and Belgium.

Biden will attend international summits during the trip, including the G-7 summit in Cornwall, England, from June 11-13 and then the June 14 NATO Summit in Brussels. While in Brussels, Biden will also participate in a U.S.-EU summit, the White House said.

“This trip will highlight his commitment to restoring our alliances, revitalizing the Transatlantic relationship, and working in close cooperation with our allies and multilateral partners to address global challenges and better secure America’s interests,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.

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