WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has told the aides that he wants to hold a personal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the November elections, according to four people familiar with the talks.
Administration officials have investigated several times and locations for another Trump-Putin summit, including potentially next month in New York, these people said.
The aim of a summit would be for the two leaders to announce progress towards a new nuclear weapons management agreement between the US and Russia, the people familiar with the talks said. One option being considered is for the two leaders to sign a blueprint for a way forward in negotiations on expanding New START, a nuclear weapons treaty between the US and Russia that expires next year, said three of the people familiar with the conversations.
They said Trump sees a summit as an opportunity to be president and demonstrate that he is capable of negotiating agreements.
“He wants it to show his dealmaker’s capabilities,” one of them said. “It’s just a big stage.”
A White House official said the president’s team has plans to hold more meetings with world leaders in the weeks leading up to the election.
“He wants it to show his deal-maker capabilities. It’s just a big stage.”
National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump did not ask for a meeting with Putin in the US, but he hopes to host the Russian leader to sign a new arms control agreement.
“We are not holding a meeting with Putin in the United States, but at some point we would like Putin to come here to sign a great arms control agreement that protects Americans and protects Russians,” O’Brien said.
A Kremlin spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The State Department announced Friday that the U.S. Special Envoy for Arms Control, Marshall Billingslea, plans to meet with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov in Vienna on Monday in the next round of US-Russia arms control talks .
After a round of talks in June, Billingslea said the US “left all options on the table” about the future of the treaty, including enlargement, but stressed that the US wants to bring China into a new agreement. Since then, the US and Russia have not agreed on some basic elements of an agreement, including even defining certain terms, during working-class meetings to iron out the technical details, according to a defense official.
It became clear that a basic framework for negotiating the treaty, signed by Trump and Putin, would move the talks with, the official said.
The White House declined to comment on the details of any possible arms deal.
“There is no current planning for one [one-on-one meeting] between President Trump and President Putin, “the official said. We negotiate on arms control. Hopefully we can make some progress in Vienna next week. For the meetings new week would come too early. “
Some of the president’s advisers have argued against a summit with Putin before the election, according to people familiar with the talks. The aides are worried that a summit with Putin would embolden the Russian leader at a time when Moscow is provoking the US, including interfering in the 2020 elections and possibly offering money to militants in Afghanistan in exchange for killing US troops.
There are also concerns among administration officials that a summit could harm the president’s policy, as attacking his opponents would make him too sociable with Russia, people familiar with the talks said. From their perspective, these people said, any potential disadvantage of Trump striking a gun control is exacerbated by the disadvantage at a time when he is already stepping into the polls.
Trump has held a handful of personal meetings with Putin since his inauguration, including a 2018 summit in Helsinki, Finland, which was widely considered disastrous for the president. Trump excluded his top aides from the meeting and said at the end that he believed Putin about US intelligence officials on the question of whether Russia would intervene in the 2016 elections.
He has also spoken frequently with Putin on the phone since taking office, mostly on July 23.
Earlier this year, Putin raised the idea of a meeting between the US, Russia, China, Britain, and France, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, to discuss a variety of global issues. But the planning of a P5 meeting was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Neither did Trump launch a Group of 7 appeal in May that he had hoped to hold in June as well as in the summer, also because of the coronavirus. Earlier this week, Trump said he was still interested in hosting the G7 summit, likely after the November election, and said he would probably invite Putin.
“I do not know, but we have invited a number of people to the meeting. I would certainly invite him to the meeting,” he said.
Russia was expelled from the G8 in 2014 following annexation of the Crimean region in Ukraine. Other members include Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan, and Canada.
If Trump and Putin meet one on one, a difficult question is whether Trump will bring reports that Russia has offered incentive payments to the Taliban to target US troops in Afghanistan. Trump called the reports a hoax and downplayed the power of intelligence. But during an interview in Prague this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he raised the issue with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“If the Russians offer money to kill Americans, or for that matter other Westerners, there will be an enormous price to pay. That’s what I shared with Foreign Minister Lavrov,” Pompeo told Radio Free Europe interview.
One idea that was recently considered is a meeting in New York around the time of the UN General Assembly in late September, these people said. The world leaders’ annual summit is set to be virtual this year because of the pandemic, although Trump said Thursday that he is considering providing his address in person.
“I’m thinking of going straight to the UN to do the speech,” Trump said at a news conference. “I think it’s appropriate. If we can do it, I’ll do it right away.”
The Trump administration has agreed a new arms control not only with Russia but also China. Officials said the administration’s direct effort to create a framework between the US and Russia was not directed at China, which opposed the talks and had a fraction of the nuclear weapons that the US and Russia had. to have.
Eventually, the Trump administration still wants to bring China into an agreement, but officials say they could extend New START in the meantime.
An extension of New START, which could be up to five years, could include two new Russian weapons systems that Moscow has already unveiled, the official said. An extension of the existing arms control treaty would also give the Trump administration more time to try to get China on board with the US and Russia into a new agreement.
If the US and Russia were to reach an agreement to extend New START, they would probably not do so for a full five years, two of the people familiar with the talks said.
The extension of the treaty does not require Senate approval on the American side and can be done through a simple exchange between Trump and Putin.
“This is an easy win for him,” said a second person familiar with the president’s talks. The president is seeking foreign policy gains ahead of the election, one U.S. official said. He had one this week with the announcement that the US had brought a deal to normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Trump unveiled the deal in an impending Oval Office announcement, and the White House said it would be followed by a more formal ceremony in the coming weeks.
Since the announcement, White House officials have praised the president and his negotiating skills.
O’Brien wrote in an op-ed article last week that the administration began talks with Russia in June on New START and is “cautiously optimistic” about agreement on a framework for arms control with Russia and China.
“President Trump and President Vladimir Putin had a heated call on July 23 in which both leaders pledged their best efforts to extend New START and make it even better,” O’Brien wrote.
Trump has expressed interest in holding another meeting with Putin in the meantime, people familiar with the talks said.
