White House pushes next Trump-Putin meeting to next year

WASHINGTON — The White House on Wednesday pushed to next year President Trump’s planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a move that comes amid intensifying criticism of Trump’s conflicting statements on Russian interference in U.S. elections.

“The president believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year,” national security adviser John Bolton said in a statement, referring to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump has sharply criticized the investigation and has maintained that there was no coordination between Russia and his presidential campaign.

Last week, the White House announced that Trump had asked Bolton to invite Putin to Washington in the fall for a follow-up meeting to their summit in Helsinki this month.

Trump has faced bipartisan pushback in Washington over what critics decry as his overly accommodating approach to Putin, who the U.S. intelligence community determined personally ordered interference in the 2016 campaign aimed at helping the then-GOP nominee.

But Russia also did not immediately jump at the opportunity to schedule a second summit between the two leaders.

In Moscow, Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said Tuesday that the Kremlin had received a second summit invitation from Bolton several days after the Helsinki meeting but that no preparations were in motion.

As scrutiny increases of Russia’s alleged attempts to interfere in November’s midterms, Trump will convene a National Security Council meeting on Friday devoted to the issue of election security.

The White House also issued a declaration on Wednesday ruling out the possibility of the U.S. recognizing Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. The statement follows reports that Putin raised the issue of a referendum on Ukraine in his meeting with Trump last week.

“The United States rejects Russia’s attempted annexation of Crimea and pledges to maintain this policy until Ukraine’s territorial integrity is restored,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.