Russia wants Sen. Rand Paul to help arrange a meeting with congressional foreign policy leaders this fall, a top Russian lawmaker said Monday.
“The issue at hand is trying, perhaps, to organize a new meeting, this time at the level of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee during the autumn session,” said Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee for the upper chamber of the Russian legislature. “That is, before the end of this year.”
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Kosachev discussed the prospects of such a meeting with Paul during the Kentucky Republican’s trip to Moscow on Monday. The libertarian-leaning senator, who traveled to Russia to back President Trump “in engaging around the world” in the midst of congressional criticism of Trump’s Helsinki summit with President Vladimir Putin, also discussed the prospective meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov.
“Of course, Mr. Paul is yet to discuss these ideas with his colleagues after returning to Washington,” Kosachev said, per TASS, a state-run outlet.
Paul wouldn’t be the only Republican senator working to arrange such a meeting. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who traveled to Moscow over the July Fourth weekend, returned from that trip with interest in establishing a “task force” comprised of Russian and American lawmakers.
[Related: GOP senator open to revising Russia sanctions after Moscow trip]
“Identify half-a-dozen legislators on both sides that meet on a regular basis, develop a relationship, so you can really have an agenda,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner, noting that he chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe. “It’d make sense for me to kind of spearhead this thing and establish this task force, I’m happy to do it. But again, I want to do it within the structure of the State Department as well. I’m not going to go out and freelance this thing.”
Paul is also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe; an aide to the Kentucky senator said that he is not working in concert with Johnson, however.
“We have serious conflicts in various parts of the globe; it would be a mistake not to have open lines of communication with them,” Paul told CNN in July.
