Trump calls Putin after Russian president’s re-election

WASHINGTON – President Trump placed a congratulatory call Tuesday to Vladimir Putin, attempting to set up a meeting between the two leaders after Putin’s election to another six-year term as the president of Russia.

“We will probably get together in the not-too-distant future so we can discuss arms — we can discuss the arms race,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday.

Putin offered an olive branch to the West on Monday after his overwhelming re-election victory, saying he wanted to resolve differences with other countries and end the arms race.

Trump said that Putin repeated that desire in their call. The arms race, Trump said, is “getting out of control, but we will never allow anybody to have anything close to what we have.”

Not discussed: Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign, and the poisoning of former spies in the United Kingdom with a Russian-made nerve agent. “I don’t believe

“An American president does not lead the free world by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections.” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

it came up” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

Russian accounts say the call was placed “on the initiative of the American side.”

Such post-election phone calls are a routine part of diplomacy. President Obama called the Kremlin after Putin’s election in 2012, touting the success of a “reset” in relations under former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

But lingering controversies over the legitimacy of Putin’s election — and Putin’s role in trying to undermine U.S. elections in 2016 — led to swift denunciations of the call.

“An American president does not lead the free world by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a statement.

Putin won re-election with 76.6% of the vote, although there were widespread reports of ballot-box stuffing and the most prominent opposition leader was banned from the ballot.

Sanders declined to pass judgment Monday. “We don’t get to dictate how other countries operate,” she said. “We can only focus on the freeness and the fairness of our elections.”

The Russian state news service said the two sides also discussed lowerlevel relations after Trump fired secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Also discussed by the two leaders, according to the Russian accounts, were the Syrian civil war, the Ukrainian crisis, terrorism, nuclear disarmament and North Korean talks, according to the Russians.