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July 20, 2018

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Putin says Trump summit was a success

Source: Agencies | 00:01 UTC+8 July 20, 2018 | Print Edition

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin yesterday accused forces in the United States of trying to undermine the success of his first summit with US President Donald Trump, but said the two leaders had begun to improve US-Russia ties anyway.

Putin and Trump sat down for their first summit in Helsinki on Monday, an event that sparked a storm of criticism in the US after Trump refused to blame the Russian leader for meddling in the 2016 US election, something Putin denies.

Trump later said he had misspoken and accused “some people” of hating the fact that he got along with Putin. The White House has been struggling to contain a political outcry and confusion over the summit ever since.

Putin, speaking to Russian diplomats from around the world assembled in Moscow yesterday, said the Helsinki summit had been successful.

“It was successful overall and led to some useful agreements. Of course, let’s see how events will develop further,” he said, without disclosing the nature of the agreements he referred to. However, Putin said “powerful” US forces were trying to sabotage what the summit had achieved.

“We see that there are forces in the United States that are prepared to casually sacrifice Russian-US relations, to sacrifice them for their ambitions in an internal political battle in the United States.”

Those same forces appeared ready to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of US jobs and hurt US business and security while waging their divisive political battle, Putin said.

Putin did not name names, but spoke of US politicians who put their “narrow party interests” above the best interests of the US and were powerful enough to be able to foist their questionable “stories” on millions of Americans.

He said it would have been naive to expect that the Helsinki summit could have resolved problems that had built up over many years in the space of a few hours.

“Despite the difference in opinions (with Trump), we did agree that Russian-US relations are in an extremely unsatisfactory state. In many respects, they are even worse than during the Cold War,” he said.

But the two leaders had at least made a start when it came to improving relations. “The path to positive changes has all the same begun,” said Putin.

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