Putin and Trump to Meet in Hamburg?

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

On Thursday, US National Security Advisor HR McMaster said "(w)hile in Hamburg (for the July 7 - 8 G20 summit, Trump) will meet with many world leaders, including President Putin of Russia."

"The president asked us to work together across all departments and agencies to do, really, three things: to confront Russia's destabilizing behavior whether it's cyber threats, whether it's political subversion here in Europe and elsewhere in the Balkans now."

The second is to deter Russia, right? Because the worse thing nobody wants is a major power war, right? And so what is it that we have to put in place to be able to deter conflict."

"And then the third thing is to foster areas of cooperation. What are the areas that we can identify in which we can work together with Russia, which is clearly in both of our interests?

According to White House National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, "(t)he discussion will not have any particular agenda. It's really going to be whatever (Trump) wants to talk about," adding:

The summit is still "a week away. We are still finalizing schedules. So agendas for meetings have not been set up at this point."

"In the G20 meetings as a whole, the world leaders are gathered. We will have pull-asides. We'll have bilaterals…(They won't be) long meetings. These are bilateral pull-asides during the G20."

On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stopped short of confirming a meeting, saying:

"(I)f we are talking about a separate meeting, no preparations are underway" at this time.

Putin and Trump will likely meet on the sidelines of the July G20 summit for the first time. On Wednesday, Sergey Lavrov said they're expected to meet "since (they'll) be in the same city, the same building, the same hall."

It's unlikely anything positive will come out of the meeting with bilateral relations at a post-Cold War low - the agenda of both countries world's apart on Syria and other major geopolitical issues.

Trump is hostage to bipartisan anti-Russia neocons infesting his administration and Congress. No amount of one-on-one talks with Putin will improve bilateral relations as long as America's imperial agenda remains unchanged.

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