Top Senate Democrats are pushing President Trump to force the issue of Russian election meddling at his Monday summit with Vladimir Putin. The 12 Russian…
Top Senate Democrats are pushing President Trump to force the issue of Russian election meddling at his Monday summit with Vladimir Putin.
The 12 Russian intelligence officers indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller Friday “must be brought to the United States so that they can stand trial, and you should demand that Mr. Putin hand them over,” Sen. Chuck Schumer and seven colleagues wrote in a letter sent to Trump Saturday.
It was a shift for Schumer, who insisted the meeting should be called off entirely when word of the Mueller indictments broke.
“Cancel the Putin meeting. Now,” he tweeted Friday.
But with the White House maintaining that the legal filing would have no effect on the leaders’ plans, the Democrats shifted their strategy.
Their letter urged Trump to “make Russia’s attack on our election the top issue you will discuss,” and warned him “not [to] meet one-on-one with Mr. Putin,” as planned.
The meeting between the U. S. and Russian presidents, set for Helsinki, Finland, has been a matter of furious contention since Trump announced it on June 28.
Trump’s conciliatory rhetoric toward Putin during and after his 2016 presidential campaign has fanned suspicion among his opponents that he intends to be soft on Russia’s autocratic regime.
Mueller’s year-long investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election – and charges that Trump allies colluded with those efforts – has made the idea of negotiations between the two nations doubly sensitive.
Many Republicans saw Friday’s indictment announcement as an attempt by the investigator to hamstring the administration’s foreign policy.
“It’s a big F-you from Mueller,” a White House official told Politico.
The relationship between the world’s two largest nuclear powers has been a fraught one for decades, alternating between cautious cooperation and belligerent saber-rattling.
In 2008, the U. S. supported the country of Georgia during its five-day war with Russia. The next year, despite then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s attempt at a diplomatic “reset,” Putin’s ambitions only expanded. His support of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and his 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, combined with the regime’s long record of human rights abuses, sharply increased tensions.
Trump has downplayed that history. “I think I’d have a very good relationship with President Putin if we spend time together,” he said Friday – one of many times he has spoken warmly of the Russian leader.
Yet his administration has not let up on sanctions that were imposed on Russia during the Obama administration, and it has not shied away from additional punitive steps. When Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, was poisoned in Britain in March, Trump expelled 60 Russian officials from the U. S. in response .
“We’ll be talking to President Putin about a number of things: Ukraine. We’ll be talking about Syria,” Trump said Friday, in a press conference before the Mueller indictments were made public. “And I’ll be talking about nuclear proliferation. That would be a great thing if we can do.”
Trump’s chief diplomat, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said the indictments should not derail the summit.
“I am confident that President Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin will put America in a better place,” Pompeo said. “It’s very important that they meet.”
Putin, for his part, is likely aiming to win an end to sanctions, which are harming Russian industries and individuals, Susanne Wengle of the University of Notre Dame told the Washington Post – as well as “recognition as a legitimate great power.”
In Helsinki, shelves are loaded with 10,000 bottles of special edition beer to commemorate the historic event – the third time that a U. S. president has met with a Russian or Soviet leader in the Finnish capital’s presidential palace.
“Most Finns don’t like [either Trump or Putin], but they know they are the two most powerful guys in the world,” Jan Vapaavuori, the mayor of Helsinki, told the Sunday Times of London. “It’s better they meet somewhere than not at all, so we are proud to host it.”
Helsinki residents seemed far less thrilled.
“I’m getting the hell out of here before the circus arrives,” said Mille, a 28-year-old waitress, as she packed her car to escape to a lakeside cabin Friday.
