MOSCOW, March 25. /TASS/. The report by US Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluding that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia to influence the 2016 election gives the US presidential administration a chance to start its ties from scratch with Moscow, Russian Senator Konstantin Kosachev said.
"Certainly, a lot can be rectified if there is goodwill. I do not rule out any initiatives on Russia in the near future because the outcome of the Mueller report has now dealt Trump’s team a full hand of trump cards," Kosachev, who heads the Russian Federation Council (the upper house of parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on his Facebook page.
According to the senator, within the Trump administration there are such hawks as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, whose position had served as a proof that "Russia would be given a tough response."
"In any case, there is a chance to start a lot in our relations from scratch, but that’s a question of whether Trump will take this risk. Certainly, we are ready. And I suggest beginning from the most pressing things: the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) and New START (Strategic Arms Reduction) Treaties," Kosachev proposed.
The lawmaker noted that Trump’s opponents would have to swallow the fact that the White House occupant is there to stay. "His chances for re-election starting from yesterday seem to be much stronger. The opponents of the incumbent president wanted the best, but you know the rest. Essentially, not a single politician has managed to build a bright future based on lies," he stressed.
The US president will now have much more room for maneuvering and he could use it, according to Kosachev. However, the US Congress had translated all its anti-Russian decisions into laws. "This is not just a precaution. I believe those who had accused Trump of collusion with Moscow knew very well that this was a lie, but they needed to buy time to pass this bulk of laws against Russia and tie the White House’s hands. And they did it," Kosachev stressed.
Why answer a lie?
The long-awaited Mueller’s report showed what Russia had known from the very outset: there was no collusion between Trump or any member of his team with the Kremlin, the senator said. Meanwhile, Russia has nothing to celebrate about because all the allegations against it are still in place. "So this is a holiday only for America and only for the pro-Trump faction of the establishment."
In its turn, Moscow should react to the fact that high-ranking politicians had been lying about collusion for two years, and given the circumstances, the US leader was forced to introduce harsher measures against Russia, the senator says. "These two years were not just lost for Russian-US relations, for them they were simply crushing. Will anyone be held liable for this damage, will anyone apologize? Will anyone correct something?" the senator questioned.
Kosachev recalled the infamous deception that had been peddled that Saddam Hussein "possessed" weapons of mass destruction: "Did they offer an apology, did they pay any compensation? They said so: yes, we lied, but Saddam is still a bad guy and that’s why we used force for a good reason."
"Now this will be exactly the same: yes, there was no collusion, but the sanctions against Russia need to be toughened," Kosachev explained.
On March 24, the US Department of Justice presented a report on the investigation launched by Special Counsel and ex-FBI director Robert Mueller in May 2017. It found no evidence that the Trump campaign team "had conspired or coordinated" with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. However, the report alleges that Moscow tried to influence the election through its Internet Research Agency (IRA) and via hacker attacks. Trump and his aides have repeatedly rejected all allegations of any illicit contact with Russian officials during the election campaign. Russia has also repeatedly denied all allegations that it had attempted to influence the US election.