Washington
\nUS President Donald Trump is pursuing a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to determine whether Moscow is willing to make progress in bilateral relationship, the White House has said.<\/p>\n
Trump and Putin will meet on July 16 in Finnish capital Helsinki to mend bilateral relations and discuss a range of national security issues, the White House and the Kremlin had announced yesterday.<\/p>\n
The announcement followed a meeting between President Putin and US National Security Adviser John Bolton, who was in Moscow this week to lay the groundwork for the summit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking forward to it. If we could all get along it would be great. The world has to start getting along,\u201d Trump told reporters travelling with him in Wisconsin yesterday.<\/p>\n
His spokesperson asserted that Trump is meeting Putin because he believes that this is in national interest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president is pursuing this meeting in the interest of America\u2019s national security to determine whether Russia is willing to make progress in our relationship,\u201d White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters told reporters aboard Air Force One.<\/p>\n
Trump, she said, hopes that the meeting can help reduce tensions and lead to constructive engagement that improves peace and security around the world. The July 16 Helsinki meeting would be the first US-Russia summit under the Trump Administration.<\/p>\n
From the beginning of his presidential campaign, Trump has insisted that he wants to have a better relationship with Russia and that it is good for the US and the world.<\/p>\n
However, he has been facing backlash from the Opposition Democrats and the think-tank community who believe that Russia under Putin interferred in the 2016 presidential election. Moscow has denied the allegations.<\/p>\n
Democratic Senator Jack Reed, Ranking Member of the Armed Services Committee, said the proposed meeting should concern all Americans that Trump is eager to stage a summit with Putin right on the heels of a critical NATO meeting in Brussels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision to cozy up to Vladimir Putin right now is ill-advised, ill-conceived, and if past summits are any indication, President Trump will be ill-prepared,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of focusing on rebuilding NATO alliance unity after his disastrous performance at the G-7 summit, President Trump seems more interested in another photo-op with an authoritarian ruler seeking to harm America\u2019s and the West\u2019s interests,\u201d Reed said.<\/p>\n
Former Secretary of State John Kerry told Aspen Ideas conference that in principle, he favoured Trump meeting with Putin.<\/p>\n
\u201cI met with him more than anybody in the Obama Administration. And for longer. And we got things done. Russia cooperated with us on the Iran Nuclear Agreement, significantly, on the Paris Climate Accord Agreement and on getting the declared chemical weapons out of Syria,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington US President Donald Trump is pursuing a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to determine whether Moscow is willing to make progress in bilateral relationship, the White House has said. Trump and Putin will meet on July 16 in Finnish capital Helsinki to mend bilateral relations and discuss a range of national security […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35583,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35581\/revisions\/35583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}