Mallika Dureja
During a brief thaw in relations, Russian President Vladimir Putin presented Joe Biden with a $12,000 pen and ornate writing set at their first presidential summit in Geneva in 2021. Eight months later, Putin invaded Ukraine.
The writing set was the most valuable present Biden received from a foreign leader during that year. The State Department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol characterised it as a “Kholuy lacquer miniature workshop desk writing set and pen” in its annual report.
The gift exchange occurred during a 2.5-hour summit in Geneva in June 2021, which is now regarded as a high point in US-Russian relations, which subsequently deteriorated in the year leading up to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Biden reportedly gave Putin a pair of his signature aviator spectacles and a glass sculpture of an American bison at the time, but neither the White House nor the Kremlin disclosed Putin’s gift.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, presented Vice President Biden with an American flag valued at $700 in 2021, according to a report that details gifts from foreign governments to federal employees.
The interchange of personal gifts is frequently illustrative of the personalities of both the giver and the recipient. During the presidency of Donald Trump, foreign leaders courted him with gifts such as a Louis Vuitton golf bag from French President Emmanuel Macron and a gold-framed portrait of Trump from the then-Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
Biden’s first disclosure included a Dupont fountain pen from Macron, a solar wristwatch from former Swiss President Guy Parmelin, and a pen drawing of Biden’s childhood residence from then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The late Queen Elizabeth II presented a photograph of herself to Biden.
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Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave Biden two dog bowls, two wool blankets, a ceramic cup and mug set, a fountain pen with a container of Oxford blue ink, and an image of a Frederick Douglass mural in Edinburgh.
The majority of donations are transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration for safekeeping, since they belong to the US government and not the recipient. There are, however, exceptions: Secretary of State Antony Blinken repaid the government $1,457 for gifts he received from Pope Francis, including a bas-relief depicting a mother and infant migrants.
