The White House announced Wednesday that Vladimir Putin will not be coming to Washington, DC this fall, and that news came via statement from National Security Advisor John Bolton blaming the Russia investigation.
“The President believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year,” national security adviser John Bolton said in a statement, referring to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
But on Tuesday, the Kremlin already had said Putin was not ready to accept Trump's invitation to Washington, suggesting instead the two men just connect at elsewhere if needed.
“There are other options (to meet) which our leaders can look at,” [Kremlin aide Yuri] Ushakov told reporters, citing a meeting of G20 leaders in Argentina which starts at the end of November.
“Maybe there will be other international events which Trump and Putin will take part in.”
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For Putin, the fact that the Helsinki summit happened at all was a geopolitical victory, which Moscow interpreted as U.S. recognition of Russia’s status as a great power and an overdue U.S. realization that its interests must be taken into account.
But its hopes of a gradual thaw in troubled U.S.-Russia relations now hang in the balance after Trump faced a squall of criticism at home over his failure to publicly confront Putin over Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election, something Russia denies.
Trump’s unexpectedly rapid invitation to Putin to come to Washington for another summit — only three days after Helsinki — has only deepened criticism of Trump’s handling of Russia, overshadowing the so-far meager results of the Helsinki summit.
Kremlin, coy on new summit idea, says Putin and Trump can meet at G20 (Reuters)
White House pushes follow-up Trump-Putin meeting to next year (WaPo)