Trump to meet top Russian diplomat at the White House

Less than a month into Trump’s presidency, he fired his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, saying Flynn misled senior administration officials about his pre-inauguration talks with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador in Washington.

In a Senate hearing Monday, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates said she bluntly warned Trump’s White House in January that Flynn “essentially could be blackmailed” by the Russians because he apparently had lied to his bosses about his contacts with Kislyak.

Trump has said he has no ties to Russia and isn’t aware of any involvement by his aides in any Russian election interference. He calls the various investigations a “hoax” driven by Democrats still bitter that their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was defeated last year.

But in the meantime, his hopes for a possible rapprochement with Moscow, so regularly repeated during the campaign, have been derailed. Ties soured further in April after the U.S. blamed a Russian ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, for a deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians and Trump fired some 60 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response.

After Tillerson visited Putin and Lavrov in Moscow on April 12, Trump said flatly, “Right now we’re not getting along with Russia at all.”

Still, Tillerson’s meeting provided a blueprint for how the former Cold War foes might go about improving ties.

A main focus is Syria, where both governments want to end a civil war that has killed up to 400,000 people, contributed to a global refugee crisis and allowed the Islamic State group to emerge as a global terror threat. The continued fighting between rebels and Assad’s military has complicated U.S. efforts to defeat IS.

Lavrov will be coming to the American capital with a Russian plan to end the violence, after hashing out an agreement with Iran and Turkey last week.

It focuses on the creation of four de-escalation zones. Critical details still need to be finalized and the U.S. response has been cautious, with top officials such as Defence Secretary Jim Mattis saying they’re still studying the concept and its various unanswered questions. The would-be safe zones would not cover areas where the U.S.-led coalition is fighting IS.

Despite the lack of clarity, the possibility of a meeting between Trump and Lavrov would in itself be a sign of some progress.

The Russian diplomat hasn’t visited Washington at all since 2013, a year before Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and two years before it intervened militarily in Syria to help Assad remain in power.

Julie Pace And Vivian Salama, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Trump to meet top Russian diplomat at the White House

What's Trending