MOSCOW, July 19. /TASS/. Monday’s Helsinki summit between Russia and the US was generally successful and paved the way for positive changes in bilateral relations though some forces in Washington are trying to undermine its results, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, addressing a meeting of Russian ambassadors and envoys on Thursday.
Putin pointed out that his first full-fledged meeting with Trump "resulted in useful agreements." "We will see how things go, as some forces in America are trying to undermine the results of the Helsinki meeting," he said.
According to Putin, "even given differences in stances," Trump and he agreed that "the current state of Russian-US relations is highly unsatisfactory in many respects, and are even worse than they were in the Cold War era." "Clearly, it would be naive to expect issues that accumulated over years to be resolved in the course of a few hours and no one expected that to happen but nevertheless, I think that we succeeded to embark on a path to positive changes," Putin said, adding that those forces were ready to sacrifice relations with Russia "to their ambition related to the domestic political struggle." In Putin’s view, these forces are also ready to sacrifice the interests of US business circles that were losing contracts worth millions of dollars and access to the Russian market, as well as dozens, if not hundreds, of thousands of jobs in the United States." They are also willing to sacrifice the interests of their allies in Europe and in the Middle East," he said.
"I mean the interests of Israel, in particular," Putin said, adding that Trump and he had discussed ways to ensure security on the Golan Heights. "It seems that no one [opposing good relations between Russia and the US - TASS] is interested in that," the Russian leader noted.
Putin pointed out that the position of those US forces "runs totally counter to our political philosophy." "We were always taught that people working for the state and society should think, first and foremost, about basic national interests and place them above all," the Russian president concluded.
Putin-Trump meeting
The first full-fledged talks between the presidents of Russia and the United States took place in Finland’s capital of Helsinki on July 16. The one-on-one meeting between Putin and Trump lasted more than two hours, while delegation members later joined the presidents for a working lunch. The Russian delegation was composed of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov. The US delegation included Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. The expanded session also took about two hours.
The talks discussed pressing bilateral and global issues. Both presidents said after the summit that a big step forward had been taken.