“I try to be careful with the language that I use. When people ask me questions, for example, about why is Mr. Trump so submissive to Vladimir Putin, and whether or not Mr. Trump fears that the Russians have something on him, I say, I don’t know. Perhaps. Maybe. I just don’t want to get into details about what I know or don’t know. I have to be very mindful of my obligations as far as classified material is concerned.”
— Former CIA Director John Brennan, quoted by the New York Times.
President Trump “plans to meet one-on-one with Vladimir Putin at the start of their July 16 summit in Helsinki, Finland… before allowing other aides to join the highly anticipated encounter with the Russian leader,” CNN reports.
“Without official note-takers or other witnesses, one-on-one meetings lack any official record, making it difficult afterward to determine whether agreements have been reached.”
Jonathan Chait: “Huh, that’s weird. It’s almost as if Trump has some kind of secret relationship involving money or blackmail with Russia he wants to discuss without fear of being revealed to his own country!”
President Trump “was noncommittal when asked if he might lift sanctions imposed on Russia,” the AP reports.
Said Trump: “We’ll see what Russia does. We’re going to be talking to Russia about a lot of things. We’re going to be talking to them about Syria, we’re going to be talking to them about Ukraine. We might even be talking about some of the things President Obama lost, like Crimea, that could come up.”
Asked if the U.S. might recognize Crimea to be part of Russia, he said: “We’ll have to see.”
President Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will meet on July 16th in Helsinki, the Washington Post reports.
“The meeting signals a growing rapprochement between the United States and Russia. Trump and Putin have pursued the tete-a-tete in hopes of soothing tensions over Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere, despite retaliatory actions taken by both governments this year.”
Meanwhile, Trump tweets: “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!”
“As the U.K. prepares to welcome Donald Trump next month, there are fears at the top of government about what he might do when he meets Vladimir Putin,” Bloomberg reports.
“One Cabinet minister, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that having watched the president’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, they worry Trump would want to burnish his deal-maker credentials by outlining a plan to reduce military presence around Europe’s Eastern boundaries.”
“Britain has forces stationed on NATO’s Eastern frontier to deter Russian aggression. The risk is that if Putin staged any kind of incursion, as has happened in the Ukraine and Crimea, there could be a direct confrontation between U.K. and Russian troops.”
Jonathan Swan: “America’s allies in Europe are worried about Donald Trump’s expected meeting next month with Vladimir Putin. Senior officials from four NATO member nations told me their worst fear is that Trump clashes with America’s allies at the NATO summit in Brussels on July 11-12 and then shortly afterwards lavishes praise on Putin.”
“They say that would leave Europeans feeling abandoned and would advance Russia’s goal of dividing European and transatlantic alliances.”
“The White House is blocking off three days on the back end of President Trump’s upcoming mid-July trip to the United Kingdom and Brussels, leaving room for a potential summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Politico reports.
“Plans for a potential sitdown are still being finalized… But the current frontrunner venue under consideration for the meeting is now Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The location would offer Putin his desired neutral ground in a country close enough to Russia that he could return to Moscow in time for the final World Cup match on July 15.”
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Washington Post: “Although many barriers would drop away if there were a declaration of war, the hazy period before a military engagement would present a major problem. NATO has just a skeleton force deployed to its member countries that share a border with Russia. Backup forces would need to traverse hundreds of miles. And the delays — a mixture of bureaucracy, bad planning and decaying infrastructure — could enable Russia to seize NATO territory in the Baltics while U.S. Army planners were still filling out the 17 forms needed to cross Germany and into Poland.”
“During at least one White House exercise that gamed out a European war with Russia, the logistical stumbles contributed to a NATO loss.”
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that he expected that a planned visit to Moscow by U.S. national security adviser John Bolton would lead to a meeting between U.S. President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Reuters reports.
Jonathan Chait: “The most important thing to understand about the Russia scandal is that it perfectly fits a clear pattern of behavior. What Vladimir Putin is accused of doing to help Donald Trump win the presidency is essentially identical to what he is either accused of or proven to have done to help many other right-wing candidates in many other countries. As the plot in the United States is slowly exposed, a remarkably similar one in the United Kingdom is quickly surfacing.”
“Months before the United States narrowly elected Trump, the United Kingdom narrowly elected to withdraw from the European Union. Both votes advanced Russian foreign policy goals — in the latter case, by splitting up the Western alliance. (Trump has energetically pursued this strategy, too.) Russia employed many of the same tools to influence both elections. It deployed social-media bots and trolls to spread its message. It recruited friendly candidates who gave voice to previously marginal Russophile positions. And, as the newly surfaced evidence suggests, it indirectly financed the campaign.”
A senior official familiar with internal deliberations tells the New Yorker: “He’s going to do it. He wants to have a meeting with Putin, so he’s going to have a meeting with Putin.”
Two former senior U.S. officials said that “they had also been briefed on Trump’s orders to his staff to plan for the Putin summit soon. One of them said it could even occur on the first leg of Trump’s trip to Europe next month, before Trump attends the annual NATO meeting.”
President Trump “told G7 leaders that Crimea is Russian because everyone who lives there speaks Russian,” BuzzFeed News reports.
“Russia invaded and then annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, leading to widespread international condemnation and sanctions. It also directly led to Russia being kicked out of the then-G8. Russian President Vladimir Putin defended Russia’s intervention in Crimea at the time saying that he had the right to protect Russian citizens and Russian speakers in Ukraine.”
“Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman who bankrolled Nigel Farage’s campaign to quit the European Union, had multiple meetings with Russian embassy officials in the run-up to the Brexit referendum,” the Observer reports.
“Banks, who gave £12m of services to the campaign, becoming the biggest donor in UK history, has repeatedly denied any involvement with Russian officials, or that Russian money played any part in the Brexit campaign.”
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Atlantic Council that Russia “is attempting to influence the midterm elections in the United States in November as well as divide the transatlantic alliance.”
Coats said Russia had already undertaken an “unprecedented influence campaign to interfere in the US electoral and political process” in 2016 and has also meddled in France, Germany, Norway, Spain, and Ukraine.
He added: “These Russian actions are purposeful and premeditated and they represent an all-out assault, by Vladimir Putin, on the rule of law, Western ideals and democratic norms.”
Jonathan Chait: “One of Russia’s principal foreign-policy goals for decades has been to split the United States from is allies. Whether by accident or by design, President Trump appears intent on bringing that dream to fruition.”
“The most immediate theater of Western disarray is today’s G7 meeting in Canada. Trump has been fomenting a trade war, hurling wild and largely groundless accusations at America’s allies… Western trade partners have attempted to reason with Trump’s demands, but the problem is that the basis for his beliefs and actions is entirely fantastical. If your neighbor is irate that you let your dog run loose in his yard, you can pacify him. If he’s irate that you are reading his thoughts through his tinfoil hat, there’s nothing you can do except disengage. And that is what they are doing.”
“President Trump said Russia should be readmitted to the Group of Seven leading economies, breaking with other world leaders who have insisted Moscow remain ostracized following its involvement in the 2014 Crimean crisis,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump’s comments, made as he was departing to Canada for the annual G-7 summit, have the potential to further upend talks with other world leaders. U.S. officials believe Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and part of this year’s G-7 summit was supposed to focus on protecting democracies from foreign meddling.”
“You should ask our colleagues in the United States. In my opinion, this is the result of the ongoing acute political struggle in the United States. Indeed, Donald Trump and I have, firstly, met more than once at various international venues and secondly, we regularly talk over the phone.”
— Russian President Vladimir Putin, quoted by Axios, on why there hasn’t been a U.S.-Russian summit meeting yet.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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