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What do Putin and Trump expect from the Helsinki summit?
MOSCOW, July 16, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin and his
US counterpart Donald Trump will meet in Finland on Monday for their first
one-on-one summit.
With relations between their two countries at lows not seen since the Cold
War, the pair will have their work cut out to bring anything positive out of
the meeting.
What are Moscow and Washington actually hoping to get from the talks?
– The view from Moscow –
The fact that the meeting is happening at all is already a win for the
Kremlin, which has long sought a summit but has been pushed back by
Washington, analyst Andrei Baklitsky said.
The conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, as well as alleged meddling in the US
election and Western sanctions are bones of contention between the countries.
Baklitsky said he expected few “groundbreaking decisions” from the summit.
A joint declaration was as much as anyone could hope for, he added.
Political analyst Alexei Malashenko suggested that for Putin, the meeting
was “an informal recognition of Russia as a great power”.
Putin might try to convince Trump to take a “more flexible” position on
war-ravaged Syria in the hope that Washington would be less active in the
country, Malashenko said.
Any compromise on that region would be seen as a victory for Moscow, he
added.
The US will want to convince Moscow that Iranian forces should leave Syria,
but Putin is “probably not ready” to jeopardise relations with Tehran over
the issue, he said.
In any case the topic is easier for the two leaders to discuss than the
ongoing conflict in the east of ex-Soviet Ukraine, which is a much more
sensitive issue for Russia.
In terms of election meddling, Baklitsky said Russia would deny — as it
long has — interfering in the 2016 US presidential vote that brought Trump
to power.
But Moscow might be willing to issue a joint statement pledging not to
carry out any such activity in the future.
– The view from Washington –
US analysts suggested the value for Trump was in putting himself at the
centre of US foreign policy.
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“He wants to be perceived as the one who makes these decisions, that he
makes them unilaterally, that he is the crucial dealmaker,” said William
Pomeranz, deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute.
“It’s the perception that is the most important for Trump rather than what
he actually receives,” he told AFP.
Pomeranz anticipated a joint statement coming out of the meeting.
Alina Polyakova, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution in
Washington, agreed that Trump would use the summit as an opportunity to boost
his domestic standing.
“What will Trump be able to sell as a win with Russia? Basically that
‘Obama has screwed up this relationship and I’ve made it right’,” she said.
“‘Russia is not a threat to us because I’ve personally made this connection
with Putin and we see eye-to-eye.'”
But William Courtney, an adjunct senior fellow at the non-partisan Rand
Corporation in Washington, said Trump might try to secure some minor
deliverable agreements.
He cited as examples the possible re-opening of the US consulate in Saint
Petersburg and the Russian one in San Francisco.
It was less likely that Trump might try to strike some sort of grand
bargain with Russia, such as recognition of Russian-annexed Crimea in return
for Moscow using its influence to get Iranian militias out of Syria, Courtney
said.
Olga Oliker, senior adviser and director of the Russia and Eurasia Program
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there were three
mutually beneficial topics the two leaders could discuss. These would be the
extension of the new START arms reduction treaty, the protection of the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the establishment of better
military-to-military communications on a range of topics.
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