President Trump and Russia’s President, Vladimir V. Putin, will hold a one-on-one summit meeting in the next few weeks, Russian officials said on Wednesday, an encounter that has raised anxieties among major European allies of the US.
The meeting will take place in a “third country”, according to Yuri Ushakov, a senior Russian diplomat, who spoke shortly after Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, visited Moscow on Wednesday to lay the groundwork for the meeting.
It was the first official confirmation from either side that the summit meeting – one that Trump has long been open to – would take place.
The two leaders met for the first time last July during the Group of 20 summit meeting in Germany, and met again on the sidelines of another international gathering, in Vietnam in November.
But the prospect of a high-level encounter, one that would presumably focus on the US-Russia relationship, has stirred anxieties in Europe, given Trump’s tensions with top American allies like Germany, France and Canada.
Trump is scheduled to attend a Nato summit meeting in Brussels on July 11 and 12, followed by a long-delayed visit to Britain, and could seemingly add another stop on the European trip to get together with Putin.
“The Presidents may agree on a joint statement, which could outline further steps for both countries to improve bilateral relations and for some joint actions on the international arena, to support international stability and security,” Ushakov told reporters.
European officials have expressed fears that the meeting with Putin might overshadow the Nato summit in Brussels, particularly if it ends in acrimony, as the recently concluded meeting of the Group of 7 in Canada did. Trump has said European nations do not shoulder their fair share of military expenses.
At the same time, Trump has been consistently reluctant to criticise Putin and eager to get together, despite elevated tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine, Syria and election meddling. Ushakov said Bolton and Russian officials had briefly discussed election meddling.
New York Times News Service