• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Trump Says He Will Meet Putin At 'The Appropriate Time'

By RFE/RL November 30, 2018

U.S. President Donald Trump says he has a "very good relationship" with Vladimir Putin, despite calling off planned talks after the Russian coast guard seized Ukrainian sailors and naval vessels, and will meet with the Russian president when the time is right.

In a wide-ranging November 30 interview with the Voice of America (VOA) on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Trump also talked up a new trade deal with U.S. neighbors Mexico and Canada and suggested he is not very concerned about China's growing global reach.

He indicated that he wants more beneficial trade ties with the European Union and others, saying that the United States has been "ripped off" by many countries for many years.

Trump had been scheduled to meet with Putin on December 1 for talks that the Kremlin had said could last two hours -- the first major meeting between the two since a summit in Helsinki in July, after which he faced criticism for seeming to accept Putin's assertion that Moscow did not meddle in the election that he won in 2016.

But the U.S. president abruptly called off the meeting, tweeting on November 29 that "it would be best for all parties concerned" to cancel because the naval craft and sailors seized by the Russian coast guard off Crimea four days earlier had not been returned to Ukraine.

In the VOA interview, Trump said that "in light of what happened with Ukraine with the ships and the sailors, it just wouldn't be the right time, but I will meet with him. I think we have a very good relationship, and I think we're going to have a very good relationship with Russia, and China, and everyone else. I mean, I think it's important. So I'll meet with him at the appropriate time."

Asked about Putin's possible motives and intentions regarding Ukraine, Trump said: "I can't read his mind, and nobody can, and he knows what he wants to do, but we can't allow certain things to happen, and you know, it happened, and I just can't be a part of it."

In the confrontation on November 25, Russian vessels first rammed a Ukrainian navy tugboat and later opened fire before boarding three naval boats and taking all 24 crewmembers into custody, including six who were wounded -- three apparently seriously.

The crewmembers were taken to Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in March 2014 after sending in troops, and Russian courts there ordered them held in custody for two months pending possible trial on border violation charges punishable by up to six years in prison.

Lawyers, officials and media reports later said that the Ukrainians were taken to Moscow, where 21 were confined to the Lefortovo jail and the other three were in a hospital at another jail.

The incident near the Kerch Strait, the only route from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov -- where Ukraine has major ports -- ratcheted up tensions between Kyiv and Moscow and prompted fears of a new front opening up after more than four years of war between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Western leaders have criticized Russia and called for the release of the Ukrainian sailors. On November 30, the Group of Seven (G7) leading industrialized countries and the European Union called the seizure of the vessels unjustified and demanded Russia free the sailors, saying that the standoff had "dangerously raised tensions."

The foreign ministers of G7 members Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States, as well as the EU's high representative, called on Russia "to release the detained crew and vessels and refrain from impeding lawful passage through the Kerch Strait."

In an initial comment on November 30, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin regretted Trump's decision to cancel the meeting, stating that "discussion of important issues on the international and bilateral agenda will be postponed indefinitely," but that it would give Putin more time to talk to other leaders.

Putin "is ready to have contacts with his American counterpart," Peskov said. Later in the day he made a more critical statement, saying that it is in the interests of "the whole world" for Moscow and Washington to discuss pressing issues and that "the longer these questions are not discussed, the more it leads to tension."

Peskov had said that Putin and Trump would probably meet briefly "on their feet" during the summit, which ends on December 1, but there was no immediate evidence that they did so on its first day.

News reports said they did not greet one another when leaders gathered at the start, and they stood far apart when leaders and their spouses posed for a photograph later in the day.

With reporting by VOA, Reuters, AFP, CNN, RIA Novosti, RBC, Interfax, and TASS

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump- says-he-will-meet-putin-at-the- appropriate-time-/29631124.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.