Trump’s ‘crucial’ Putin talks
Donald Trump will fly out of Scotland today and face one of the most important meetings of his presidency tomorrow.
The president meets Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in what has been billed as crucial talks.
How Mr Trump handles the issue of Russian involvement in the Crimean peninsula will have implications for European security and American credibility.
The Kremlin has said Crimea, which the Russian military seized from Ukraine in 2014, is a settled matter and not a topic for summit discussion.
Trump did not rule out Crimea as being Russian when asked about the issue during a press conference at the NATO summit in Brussels last week.
Trump blamed his predecessor, Barack Obama, for allowing Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, a region of Ukraine, “on his watch.”
The president also said Russia had built infrastructure connecting itself to Crimea, as well as a new naval base nearby.
“What will happen with Crimea from this point on? That I can’t tell you. But I’m not happy with the situation,” Trump said.
The US imposed sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Those sanctions remain in place and have been renewed by the Trump administration. It is also supporting the Ukrainian military in defending the rest of its territory from pro-Russian separatists fighting in the country’s east.
On Friday, a US grand jury charged 12 Russian intelligence officers for their roles in hacking into the US Democratic Party and leaking stolen emails and other information during the 2016 presidential campaign.