{"id":62046,"date":"2018-04-03T05:14:06","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T05:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=62046"},"modified":"2018-04-03T05:14:06","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T05:14:06","slug":"russia-presses-trump-white-house-meeting-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/russia-presses-trump-white-house-meeting-putin.html","title":{"rendered":"Russia Presses Trump for White House Meeting With Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia Presses Trump for White House Meeting With Putin<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

MOSCOW \u2014 Russia sought to move beyond last week\u2019s diplomatic confrontation with the West on Monday by pressing President Trump for a White House meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin that would undercut the perception that the angry reaction to the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain has left it isolated from the international community.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Kremlin foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said in Moscow that Mr. Trump, in a telephone call with Mr. Putin on March 20, proposed that the two leaders meet at the White House in the near future. Mr. Ushakov made clear that the Russian leader would like to take him up on the suggestion. \u201cThis is a rather positive idea,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump mentioned to reporters on the day of the phone call that he expected to \u201cbe seeing President Putin in the not-too-distant future,\u201d and the White House confirmed on Monday that it was among \u201ca number of potential venues\u201d discussed. But the phone call came before last week\u2019s tit-for-tat mass diplomatic expulsions sparked by the nerve agent attack on Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian spy living in Britain.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is not clear whether such a meeting is still viable, and both sides issued vague or even conflicting statements on Monday. Within hours of Mr. Ushakov\u2019s comment, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, discounted it, saying the president\u2019s adviser was not correct.<\/span><\/p>\n

In her own statement, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, confirmed that a White House meeting was discussed but played down the prospect, saying, \u201cWe have nothing further to add at this time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea of a personal get-together between the two presidents after each of them expelled 60 diplomats and closed consulates underscored the volatile nature of the Russian-American relationship these days. Mr. Trump has remained on friendly terms with Mr. Putin personally even as ties between their countries spiral toward Cold War depths.<\/span><\/p>\n

But a meeting between the two leaders at this point would seem to conflict with the attitude of Mr. Trump\u2019s incoming foreign policy team, including Mike Pompeo, his nominee for secretary of state, and John R. Bolton, his new national security adviser, both of whom are considered Russia hawks.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the Russians are looking for an off-ramp at the moment,\u201d said Angela Stent, a former national intelligence officer on Russia during President George W. Bush\u2019s administration and now director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University. \u201cPerhaps they have followed\u201d news accounts \u201cabout divisions over Russia policy and they want to set a possible meeting in motion before Bolton and Pompeo assume their new jobs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarah E. Mendelson, a former State Department official under President Barack Obama now at Carnegie Mellon University, suggested it may be part of \u201ca strategy on the Russians\u2019 part to engage Trump as if he were disconnected from his\u201d advisers. Just as Mr. Trump engages Mr. Putin as if there were not tension because of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the special counsel investigation into contacts with his campaign, Mr. Putin may simply ignore that as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt all seems to be happening in parallel universes,\u201d she said, \u201cone in which Russia poisons and interferes, and another in which none of this happened.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Other analysts said the discussion of a possible meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin may be more for domestic consumption in a Russia that sees itself excoriated by the international community after the poisoning of Mr. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are realizing what a major hit they took,\u201d said John R. Beyrle, a former American ambassador to Russia. \u201cIt\u2019s a way to say, \u2018See, it\u2019s not so bad, Putin is still welcome in polite society.\u2019 I was in Moscow last month just before the elections and was struck by how fed up some members of the Russian elite are getting at their perpetual pariah status \u2014 and this was before Skripal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A White House visit would be a significant gesture toward the Russian leader. Mr. Putin has not been to the White House since 2005, when Mr. Bush hosted him there. Other than United Nations sessions, Mr. Putin\u2019s last visit to the United States for a presidential summit meeting came in 2007 when Mr. Bush and his father hosted him at the family compound in Kennebunkport, Me. Mr. Obama never invited Mr. Putin to the White House during his eight years in office, and the Russian declined an invitation to Camp David in 2012 for a meeting of what was then called the Group of 8. The two did meet in New York in 2015 during a United Nations session.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin have met in Germany and in Vietnam on the sideline of international summit meetings and currently have no plans to get together before November, when both are expected to attend a Group of 20 gathering in Argentina.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Ushakov said the two sides had not started any preparatory talks for a White House meeting because of the tailspin in relations. He nonetheless voiced a desire that Mr. Trump not drop the idea. \u201cI hope the Americans won\u2019t abandon their proposal to discuss the possibility of holding the summit,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as Mr. Trump has shown a striking reluctance to criticize Mr. Putin, even when the two countries are ejecting each other\u2019s diplomats, the Kremlin and the Russian news outlets it controls have often avoided criticizing Mr. Trump directly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Soon after news of a possible White House meeting broke on Monday, a discussion on Rossiya 1, a state-controlled television channel, focused on a host of conspiracy theories to explain why the nerve gas attack in Britain had so disrupted relations between Moscow and Washington. Most revolved around the premise that American interest groups opposed to Mr. Trump\u2019s desire for rapprochement with Russia had staged the poisoning as a \u201cprovocation\u201d to drive a wedge between Europe and Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Particularly popular was the idea that the attack was an attempt to get Europeans to stop importing natural gas from Russia and shift to supplies from the United States. None of the participants in the discussion faulted Mr. Trump for the sharp deterioration in relations.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a debate on state-controlled television on Sunday evening, a weekly shout-fest often dedicated to screaming about American perfidy, Sergey Mikheev, one of the participants, put forward what seems to be the consensus view of Russia\u2019s establishment: Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin are both eager to meet as soon as possible so they can stabilize relations but are prevented from doing so by opposition in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not because Putin isn\u2019t ready, and not because Trump doesn\u2019t want to meet Putin,\u201d he said. \u201cNo such thing at all. Trump said that he is, in fact, even ready to meet Kim Jong-un. It is internal problems that prevent Trump from meeting anyone.\u201d America\u2019s \u201cinternal political crisis,\u201d he added, \u201cprevents Trump from solving this problem. Current domestic political situation in the U.S. is such that Trump can\u2019t afford meeting Putin.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/04\/02\/world\/europe\/trump-putin-white-house-meeting.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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