The two have been subject to much speculation and scrutiny over the past several months, so it was natural that their first meeting would generate huge interest in their home countries and around the world.
The just-concluded G20 summit in Hamburg saw Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin come face to face for the first time. Trump called it an “honour” to meet Putin, while the latter said he was “delighted” to meet the US president. While any meeting between two of the most powerful people on earth would naturally garner attention, this one was particularly keenly watched because of the investigation in the US over the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Putin’s Russia.
So, what does one make of the meeting? Opinion is varied and divided. According to one analysis, the meeting “cemented a bond that will define the Trump presidency – for better or for worse”. On one level, it was just an initial meeting between two powerful men who understand the power of creating and manipulating imagery. But it was more than that, mainly because the range of issues on their combined agenda was exhaustive. The Trump-Putin relationship, according to some, has the potential to shape the lives of millions.
Going into the details, some observers felt Trump’s words made American foreign policy suddenly sound more mature than what it has been of late. At the summit, they said, Trump returned US policy on Russia “towards something resembling normalcy. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin as the very model of a pragmatic, well-briefed president at work”.
Others, meanwhile, felt that the White House allowed Russia to shape early impressions of the meeting between Trump and Putin but responded quickly with its own account of the session that cast Trump as the aggressor who led off by expressing concerns about election meddling. Putin got his version of events out first, telling Russian state media outlets that he and Trump discussed “a lot of issues such as Ukraine, Syria, other problems, some bilateral issues”.
Omitting any mention of a conversation about political interference, Putin raised the possibility that Trump hadn’t brought it up during their meeting. But the White House did not allow that notion to stay for long. Press secretary Sean Spicer gathered reporters for a news conference where Tillerson said Trump made meddling the first topic and that he and Putin “had a very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that Trump accepted Putin’s assurance that Russia did not interfere in the election. An unnamed “senior administration official” followed up by telling CNN that Trump did no such thing.
Overall, it was felt that Trump made it through his first face-to-face meeting with Putin “without any gaffes”. “There was no bear hug, no Trump-style bombast. Trump did not claim, as he once did, that his special bond with Putin would make ‘great deals’ easy. Most important, Trump finally made it clear that he accepts the 68-year-old obligation to defend Nato countries from Russian pressure,” one analysis read.
