SENATORS WHO WENT TO RUSSIA DENY THEY WERE DUPED BY HOSTS
social divisions.
In Moscow, the senators traded pledges to work toward better relations with Russian lawmakers and Sergey V. Lavrov, the foreign minister. But they repeatedly found themselves locked in tense disputes over the effects of U.S. sanctions and Russian denials they had meddled in American politics.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby, R-ala., who led the delegation and is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, greeted the officials by saying that though two nations were competitors, they “don’t necessarily need to be adversaries.”
“I’m not here today to accuse Russia of this or that or so forth,” he told Vyacheslav Volodin, the Duma speaker.
Russian officials and commentators signaled they were delighted with that tone. They declared that they had ceded no ground to the Americans.
“We heard things we’d heard before, and I think our guests heard rather clearly and distinctly an answer that they already knew — we don’t interfere in American elections,” said Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s former ambassador to the United States and a player in the election investigations, according to The Washington Post.
Maxim Suchkov, a foreign policy expert with ties to the foreign ministry, told the RBC newspaper that the delegation’s visit aimed to bring the Republican Party into line on the importance of dialogue with Russia, a policy supported by Trump.
Nikonov described the American senators as “Trumpists” who have taken “firmly anti-russian positions yet are open to dialogue.”
Back in Washington this week, the senators were left to distance themselves from charges they had allowed themselves to be used as props by a government hostile to U.S. interests — particularly at a time set aside to commemorate American democracy.
Comments by one of them, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, set off howls from Democrats. Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, returned to Washington questioning the value of punitive U.S. sanctions targeting Russian financial interest and urging his fellow senators to reconsider how to best discourage Russian interference.
“I’ve been pretty upfront that the election interference — as serious as that was, and unacceptable — is not the greatest threat to our democracy,” Johnson said in an interview with The Washington Examiner. “We’ve blown it way out of proportion.”
Johnson was forced to clean up his remarks Tuesday, saying the senators had delivered a stern warning to Moscow and the Russians would regret their disparaging comments toward U.S. lawmakers.
Shelby, too, sounded a more skeptical note back at the Capitol. He and almost all other senators voted Tuesday to advance a largely symbolic measure meant to reaffirm the United States’ commitment to NATO amid threats by Trump and to call on the administration to develop a comprehensive strategy to blunt Russian aggression.
“My advice to the president would be, ‘Be careful,’” he told reporters. “You are dealing with a tough man, a smart man, and he probably wants to get something and give nothing in return.”
The episode could serve as something of a cautionary tale for Trump’s own long-delayed summit meeting with Putin on Monday. As Trump departed for a weeklong visit with European allies he signaled that he was looking forward to a meeting with Putin.
“Frankly, Putin may be the easiest of them all — who would think?” Trump said.