German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced talks with US President Joe Biden on relations with Russia. They will see each other at the G7 meeting and at the Nato summit.

Berlin (dpa) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) has announced negotiations with US President Joe Biden on relations with Russia following the US waiver of sanctions in connection with the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Biden has "now also met us halfway to some extent with respect to the Nord Stream 2 conflict, where we have different views", Merkel said during the WDR-Europaforum on Thursday in an interview with Tina Hassel, the head of ARD’s Berlin studio, and NDR editor-in-chief Andreas Cichowicz. They will now continue to talk about "what now are also the necessary commonalities in the relationship with Russia". 
Asked what Biden would get from Germany or Europe in return for waiving the sanctions, Merkel said, "That’s not how it works." She said that she would see Biden at the G7 meeting in Great Britain from 11 to 13 June and at the Nato summit in Brussels, adding that she would make sure that Germany keeps to its promises to further increase the defence budget and to take responsibility in Nato. Russia, Ukraine and China policy will need to be discussed. But this is "not something that is measured in millimetres and grammes". Partnerships are about trying to "listen to each other's thoughts and attitudes and find good compromises".
In response to the comment that deals are always done in politics, the Chancellor replied: "You usually only talk about them once they have been done". She said that talks with the USA were taking place in many areas - and that there was a very broad agenda. 
In a report to Congress given by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, it was stated that the waiving of punitive measures against Nord Stream 2 AG in Zug, Switzerland, its German managing director Matthias Warnig and four other employees was in the "national interest" of the USA. The reason given was that such sanctions would have negatively affected "US relations with Germany, the EU and other European allies and partners".

Link : https://www.deutschland.de/en/news/us-waives-nord-stream-sanctions