A surprisingly upbeat meeting between Trump and the Russian foreign minister is being promoted by Russia as a long-promised reset in relations.
Clad in hockey gear in the red, white and blue of the Russian flag, President Vladimir Putin pretended not to know what CBS reporter Elizabether Palmer was talking about when she asked about the fallout of President Donald Trump’s stunning dismissal of James Comey, the FBI director leading the investigation into suspected ties of the Trump campaign to Russia.
“Your question looks very funny for me. Don’t be angry with me,” he said with a shrug through his press aide and translator Dmitry Peskov. “We have nothing to do with that. President Trump is acting in accordance with his confidence and his constitution.”
“Why us? I’m going to play hockey with hockey fans, I suggest you to do the same,” he said, just before hitting the ice and going on to win the hockey match by 17-6, the Russian press exalted.
Putin has reason to be cocky. He finally has the ear and admiration of the leader of the world’s superpower, a Putin promise fulfilled after years of chilly U.S.-Russia relations. Whether the Kremlin had a hand in orchestrating it or not, his nemesis country is starting to question the strength of its democracy, with press being shut away from the White House in an unspoken media blackout.
The Russians, on the other hand, are getting to run the show.
Trump’s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was closed to the American press and the White House didn’t provide photos, leaving the world to rely on only one source: a photographer from Tass news agency, a state-owned Rusian newspaper. The photo, showing a beaming Lavrov in the Oval Office was tweeted out by the Russian foreign ministry in both English and Russian. The Russian embassy also tweeted a photograph of a smiling Trump, his arms around Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador at the heart of the ongoing investigation. The White House told the White House press corps who’d asked whether Russian media had been allowed into the closed meetings that “on background, our official photographer and their official photographer were present, that’s it.”
Lavrov had been persona non grata at the White House since 2013.
Trump’s firing of Comey comes at arguably at the worst time possible. A Senate committee had issued subpoenas to high-ranking Trump aides, starting with Michael Flynn, demanding he submit documents related to the investigation. The move indicates that the investigation is advancing into new, even more concerning phases.
Trump followed on from a request by Putin to receive Lavrov at the White House, a spokesman told Politico. The White House said the meeting had been “on the books for months,” despite conflicting reports that it occurred because it may have been a last-minute stop before Lavrov’s planned visit to Alaska, where he and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will attend a multinational Arctic council meeting, the magazine reported.
“Putin is saying ‘I didn’t do it,’ to underscore that the investigations are ludicrous and are meant to politically derail Trump,” said Russian foreign policy expert Vladimir Frolov. “But, obviously, he relishes the sense that he is viewed as powerful, which is part of his image and his modus operandi. He wants people to fear him, which he equates with true respect.”
The investigation is a godsend for a Kremlin eager to frame chaos around the world’s democracies as proof of its own might, said Anna Arutunyan, the Russian-American author of “The Putin Mystique.”
“The investigation is dragging on and Putin is winning a lot of buzz and creating this fear of Russia, making Russia seem more influential and powerful than it really is,” she said. That, in turn has Russians thinking, “wow, the U.S. is investigating Russia, Russia must be very powerful. That’s a very important tool,” said Arutunyan.
The White House has steadfastly chosen to focus on everything except Russia’s purported role in the presidential election, and that difference in messaging was clear this week.
Trump and the Russians “emphasized the need to work together to end the conflict in Syria,” but also “raised the possibility of broader cooperation on resolving conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere,” said the official White House readout of the Lavrov meeting.
“The President further emphasized his desire to build a better relationship between the United States and Russia,” it added, making no mention of the investigation or the multiple questions swirling around Comey’s dismissal.
But it was a different message when Lavrov held his own press conference at the Russian Embassy after his White House visit. The seasoned diplomat was cheerful, saying that the meeting “confirmed that despite all of the difficulties, our countries can and must act together to help solve key problems on today’s international agenda.”
Rather than explain where the U.S. position in solving those key problems would be, White House deputy spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Fox news that, in regards to the investigation, “it’s time to move on, and, frankly, it’s time to focus on the things the American people care about.”
She said, “we’ve heard it for the last 11 months. There is no ‘there’ there.”
That there is no there there remains to be decided. And as the Trump administration tries to convince the country to move on, its Russian counterparts are swooping in to fulfill their ambitions of self-aggrandizing, only made sweeter with some old-fashioned America-bashing.
“It must be humiliating for the American people to realize that the Russian federation is controlling the situation in America,” Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov deadpanned. “How is it possible for such a great power and such a great country?”
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