Trump-Putin II likely this year
Russia ready to discuss prez’s visit to DC as his US counterpart invites him for 2nd round of talks
Moscow
Russia is ready to discuss a proposed new meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump, Interfax news agency cited Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, as saying on Friday.
Antonov said Putin made concrete proposals to Trump about resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Interfax said on Friday, though he did not spell out what these were.
The Russian ambassador was cited as saying it would be good to organise a meeting between Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and US counterpart James Mattis, adding a group of US lawmakers are also planning to visit Russia.
Republican members of Congress travelled to Moscow for a rare trip this month, and lawmakers could visit again in the first half of August, senior lawmaker Konstantin Kosachyov was quoted as saying by TASS news agency.
Earlier, the White House announced the Russian President has been invited to Washington later this year, despite mounting criticism over Trump’s failure to take Putin to task over Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential polls. The announcement came even as leaders in Washington were still struggling to understand what happened when Trump and Putin met earlier this week in Helsinki, Finland. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a tweet said National Security Adviser John Bolton extended the invitation and that “discussions are already underway”.
“That’s gonna be special!” said Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, when he was told about the invitation during a live interview. The White House was finding it hard to explain statements made by Trump after the Helsinki meeting as uncertainty spread throughout the government about whether he had reached agreements with Putin on Syria and Ukraine, leaving his military and diplomatic corps in the dark, the New York Times reported.
Coats said he would have advised against Trump and Putin’s private meeting in Helsinki, which worried US security officials because no notes were taken and only two interpreters were present, but that he had not been consulted.
Underscoring how little is known about the meet, Coats said he was not told what happened in the room. Asked if it was possible Putin had secretly recorded the more-than two-hour meet, Coats answered: “That risk is always there.”
Thursday’s announcement was the latest unexpected turn in a week in which Trump faced a torrent of bipartisan criticism over his cozy approach to Putin and his conflicting statements about Moscow’s election interference, all while brushing aside warnings that Putin should be viewed as an adversary. “The summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “I look forward to our
second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed.”
Meanwhile, Trump, along with 23 companies and professional associations have signed a commitment to train 3.8 million unemployed American workers. “In the days and months ahead, we hope that hundreds of companies and organisations will join us in this effort,” Efe news quoted Trump as saying. Russia has successfully testfired a new air defence missile from a testing range in Kazakhstan, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Friday. A missile defence unit of the Russian Aerospace Forces has tested a new, modernised air defence missile at the Sary Shagan of the Kazakhstan firing range, Dy Commander of Aerospace Forces’ air and missile defence taskforce, the Andrei Prikhodko newspaper said.