Worldwide criticism follows Helsinki summit
Journalists from around the world follow the meeting between Presidents Putin and Trump in Helsinki, on Monday.
LONDON — The brutal.
“Best ally of Putin,” said Tuesday’s front page of France’s sober-minded Le Monde.
“Trump makes it easy for Putin,” echoed German’s DieWelt.
“Trump 0, Putin 1,” said the Finnish business daily Kauppalehti, playing off the just-concluded World Cup soccer tournament in Russia.
In globe-spanning day-after coverage, Helsinki, the Finnish capital where Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump met Monday, suddenly became shorthand for what was widely described as a very bad day for theU.S. president.
The leading Italian daily Corriere della Sera saidHelsinki marked an “American surrender,” describing Trump’s performance as “obliging sidemanto a victoriousVladimir Putin.”
Traditional U.S. allies in Europe, having already absorbed a blast of criticism from Trump at last week’s NATO summit in Brussels, were dismayed anew by his seeming show of solidarity with Putin over the issue of election interference by Moscow.
That issue hits close to home for key U.S. friends: European elections also have been hit by Russian cyberattacks, which previously have drawn strong pushback from leaders like France’s President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British PrimeMinister Theresa May.
In Washington on Tuesday, Trump walked back his Helsinki comments, saying he accepted the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia had interfered in the presidential vote. “Could be other people also,” hesaid. “Alotof people out there.”
But the summit’s impact lingered. Britain’s Guardian newspaper, in its lead headlineontheHelsinki meeting, rolled out the T-word — “treasonous” — albeit in quotes. headlineswere
Corriere della Sera summarizedPutin’s stance as asserting “zero interference” in the2016U.S. vote. “Trump believes him,” it added flatly.
The Helsinki encounter also won plaudits on Europe’s far right. Italy’s hardline Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, whowas inMoscow to meet Russian officials, praised Russia for having a government “that acts in the interests of its people” and lamented that such behaviorwas “rare in Europe.”
Some took a long view — and a gloomy one — of the summit’s still-to-be-felt repercussions. Italian daily La Repubblica saw a symbolic end to the rules-based postwarworld order.
“Do Trump and Putin have alternative plans to substitute it?” it asked in a front-page editorial. An oped in Le Monde called the Trump-Putin meeting a “dangerous liaison” for the entireworld.
“Trump is praising Putin while at the same time he is constantly attacking without any reason America’s closest allies,” columnist Martin Klingstwrote in Germany’sDie Zeit online.
Another German commentator, Stefan Kornelius, wrote in the Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the world’s fate lay in the handsof“twoeasily irritated senior citizens, one ofwhom is possibly somewhat smarter than the other.”
Britain’s tabloids, fresh from covering Trump’s tumultuous visit to the United Kingdom last week, had a field day. “Putin’s poodle,” the Daily Mirror dubbed Trump. The Daily Express spoke of Putin’s “new best buddy” and had a doublepage spread with the headline: “A nod and a wink ... and the ColdWar ends.”
In an op-ed, the Guardian said Trump was inadvertently prescientwhenhepreviewed last week’s swing through Europe by saying the meeting with Putin would be the “easiest” of his stops.
“First rough up NATO in order to damage transatlantic commitments,” said an op-ed summing up the president’s seeming mission. “Then stir things up in Britain in order to damage the EU, and, finally, play the co- operative statesman in his talkswith theRussian president.
“Or, to put it anotherway: bully, bully and cringe,” it said.
Other news outlets focused on national or regional interests in assessing the Putin-Trump meeting. Israel has grown increasingly alarmed about the presence of Iranian forces and allied militias in Syria. The Jerusalem Post noted praise for Israel, while saying the two leaders “diverge on Syria and Iran.”
Trump’s assertion that theUnited States andRussia could together address dire humanitarian conditions in Syria — whereMoscow and the government of ally Bashar Assad have staged countless punishing airstrikes — were met with skepticism and derision by some human rights and opposition activists.
“Will you now explain how?” the pro-opposition Syria Campaign tweeted at Trump onTuesday.
In Germany, where Foreign Minister Heiko Maas had weighed in Monday with a statement saying, “We can no longer fully rely on the White House,” some newspapers framed the summit as a meeting of minds — and one at odds with the European consensus. “Summit of the autocrats,” said thebusinessdaily Handelsblatt.
Some outlets stuck with a more straightforward approach in news coverage but paired that with scathing commentary.
The Irish Times, in a news story, cited a “barrage of US criticism” over Helsinki. But in a separate opinion piece by Washingtonbased columnist Suzanne Lynch, it calledTrump’sperformance“humiliating,” saying that the news conference “shows a rambling, inexperienced and amateur US president.”
Special correspondent Boyle reported from London and Times staff writer King from Washington. Staff writer Alexandra Zavis in Beirut and special correspondents Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin, Sabra Ayres in Helsinki and Tom Kington in Rome contributed to this report.