Senior aides to President trump for several days tried to avoid answering the question, will likely trump today’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to expose the harsh criticism of Moscow for its intervention in the American elections. Looks like he asked this question, but do it so that it became not better, but worse.
The reason is that trump seems to have accepted Putin’s words, who denied any interference in the elections at face value. All US intelligence agencies believe that the Kremlin has conducted an elaborate campaign to help him, to Trump, to win the fight for the presidency.
But dealt the trump harm is not limited: to the Minister of foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov, the us President told Putin that some in the United States “exaggerate” the degree of Russia’s influence on the election outcome. He thereby draws in Moscow in the party trump the war raging here in the USA.
This was the most interesting and important result of the meeting, trump and Putin. In fact, Russia has received from this meeting what she wanted, namely, the appearance that the administration trump recognizes the innocence of the Kremlin of meddling in American elections.
Over this meeting a heavy load “hung” the question of whether Congress will adopt sanctions against Russia in response to its intervention in the elections. Trump mentioned the possibility that they soon may be taken, but also told the Russian leader that he would like to overcome this obstacle. “The President drew attention to the measures discussed in the Congress, the Secretary of state said Rex Tillerson. But I think the two presidents — I think rightly — focused on the question of how we can move forward.”
So Putin got his way: trump bought into his “fake news” about Russia’s role in the American elections and expressed only weak support for new sanctions.
Putin swept trump — the wizard deals — around.
Training plays an important role. But trump was not ready
This is proof of how important preparation is. When trump was headed to this meeting, it was hardly any records, or abstracts (by the way, it was not even a hotel room). Putin also came to the meeting prepared, which, as you know, he always does. My colleague from Vox Drizen Yochi (Yochi Dreazen) explains: “Once a senior member of the George W. Bush administration told me an instructive story about Vladimir Putin. Each meeting, according to officials, started in the same way that Putin took out of his jacket pocket sheets with the records in which were listed all the alleged “sins” committed by the USA against Russia, and began to read out a list of items. And only after that start discussion on the merits.”
After meeting Putin, apparently, got what he wanted. However, similar results for it’s business as usual.
As wrote The New York Times, Russia had expected that Putin will be the winner regardless of what happened during the meeting, actually. One of the scenarios suggested that during the conversation, no substantial agreement will not be reached, after which the Kremlin could put trump as a weak leader. According to another scenario, trump had to agree to work with Russia. Because of this, the President of the United States might seem to be the helpless, given Russia’s actions contrary to U.S. interests in Ukraine, in Syria and during the elections.
“It’s a win-win situation for Putin,” — said in an interview with The New York Times political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow center Andrei Kolesnikov.
Contributed to the successful outcome of the negotiations and the fact that trump has focused his attention not the other topics. Early this morning, trump tweeted that “all” the summit discuss the question of why the former Chairman of the election headquarters of Hillary Clinton, John Podesta is not transferred to the server of the National Committee of the Democratic party in the FBI and the CIA (which, to put it mildly, seems highly unlikely).
Podesta, who is now my wife travels to the USA, intervened in the debate, calling trump’s “crazy” and advised him “not to be distracted, to focus on the game and turn on the brain”.
However, trump and Putin during the meeting came to one agreement — they agreed on the ceasefire in the South-West of Syria. All this, of course, good. Only here the most part of the fighting is in the East and in the North of Syria — in particular, in raqqa, the actual the capital of ISIS (a terrorist organization banned in Russia — approx. ed.). A significant part of the territory in the South-West of the country is already “leveled”, so it is not clear that there will give this cease-fire.
However, the results of the first personal meeting between the two presidents most people will come to the conclusion that the American leader accepted at face value the statements of the Kremlin denies meddling in the elections and do not care about the facts.
In other words, trump has done more damage, met with Putin than if he stayed home.
