President Trump’s Monday summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin will be “difficult,” a Kremlin official predicted Thursday.
“They [the negotiations] will be difficult and you know the extent of the disagreements on the agenda, so it’s unlikely that anything else can complicate it now,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said according to TASS, a state-run media outlet.
Trump will meet Putin in Helsinki, Finland, a neutral location for the first formal bilateral meeting between the two leaders. The summit is the subject of scrutiny and skepticism, given the host of issues that divide the United States and Russia, as well as the lingering controversy from Russian interference in the 2016 elections. It follows a tense NATO summit, at which Trump demanded that allies increase defense spending and berated Germany for contemplating a major gas pipeline deal with Russia.
“Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia,” Trump said Wednesday. “We’re protecting Germany, we’re protecting France, we’re protecting all of these countries. And then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia where they’re paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia … I think that’s very inappropriate.”
Peskov protested that characterization.
“As for Germany’s dependence as a major buyer of our gas — we cannot agree with this, because such deliveries of pipeline gas do not lead to the dependence of one country on another, but to complete mutual dependence,” he told reporters Thursday. “This guarantees stability and further development of mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields.”
Trump’s complaints about the pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2, were marked by a tone of rare hawkishness on Russia from the president. “It’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia where we’re supposed to be guarding against Russia,” he said.
The president also knocked Russia for annexing Crimea from Ukraine, a land seizure that led to western sanctions and Russia’s expulsion from the bloc of the world’s largest industrialized democracies.
“What will happen with Crimea from this point on? That I can’t tell you,” he said Thursday. “But I’m not happy about Crimea. But again, that was Barack Obama’s watch, not Trump’s watch.”
Still, Trump’s comments during the NATO summit also fanned Democratic criticism that he lacks a commitment to the allies.
“President Trump’s brazen insults and denigration of one of America’s most steadfast allies, Germany, is an embarrassment,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Wednesday. “His behavior this morning is another profoundly disturbing signal that the president is more loyal to President Putin than to our NATO allies.”
But Trump declared himself “very happy” with the results of the summit after the allies issued a statement affirming their intention of increasing defense spending. “The people have stepped up today like they’ve never stepped up before,” Trump said. He also reiterated his view that Putin is a “competitor” in the lead-up to the Helsinki summit. “Somebody was saying, ‘is he an enemy?’ He’s not my enemy,” Trump said. “Is he a friend? No, I don’t know him well enough.”
