President Trump should not cancel his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the administration’s top diplomat said in a rebuff of Democratic demands.
“I think it’s very important that they meet,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters late Friday while returning from Mexico.
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Trump is scheduled to meet Putin on Monday in Helsinki, Finland — the first formal bilateral meeting between the two since he took office. Sure to attract attention under any circumstances, the encounter became even more charged on Friday when the Justice Department unveiled an indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers accused of conducting the cyberattacks against the Democratic Party during the 2016 elections.
[READ HERE: Mueller’s indictment against 12 Russians for hacking Democrats in 2016]
“We must share our deep trepidation and shock that you plan to meet with Vladimir Putin alone and without senior advisors present,” a group of Democrats from the House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote Friday. “Unfortunately, due to your constant expressions of sympathy for Vladimir Putin, your conflicts of interest, and your attacks on our closest allies, we do not have confidence that you can faithfully negotiate with the Russian leader, and we urge you to cancel the meeting.”
Other Republican and Democratic critics argued that Trump should cancel the meeting if he “is not prepared to hold Putin accountable,” as Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain said after the release of the indictment.
“President Trump must demand that Putin hand over all of the Russian spies indicted by the United States for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations panel, added.
Many foreign policy analysts worry that Trump enters the meeting at a disadvantage with Putin, who billed himself “an expert in human relations” during his tenure as a KGB officer. The president’s sunny review of the Singapore summit with dictator Kim Jong Un, followed as it was by a series of North Korean displays of disrespect and recalcitrance, did little to allay those concerns.
But one veteran of the Obama administration sees an opportunity for U.S. policymakers.
“The United States cannot coerce Russia into doing its will,” Michael Kimmage, who worked at the State Department on Russia/Ukraine issues, wrote in Foreign Affairs while reflecting on the decision to sanction Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. “Continued pressure where interests diverge plus diplomatic normalization would be a new approach for the United States. If it fails, the pressure can always be increased. Progress, if achieved, would be incremental.”
Pompeo stood by the decision to meet. “I am confident that President Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin will put America in a better place,” he said.
