News / Foreign Policy

Trump denies discussing Russia sanctions with Putin

Sunday, 09 July 2017 4:33 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 09 July 2017 4:34 PM ]

US President Donald Trump (R) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin meet on the sidelines of this year's G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, July 7, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

US President Donald Trump says Western economic sanctions against Russia were left out of the discussion during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Sanctions were not discussed at my meeting with President Putin,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “Nothing will be done until the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved!”

The two leaders met for the first time on the sidelines of annual G20 summit in Germany’s Hamburg on Friday, in a meeting that Trump said was “tremendous.”

The US and its allies in the European Union have imposed a series of economic sanctions against Russia over its alleged role in the ongoing Ukraine crisis.

The two sides have also been at loggerheads over their military intervention in Syria.

While Russia has been hitting terrorist positions across Syria on a request from Damascus, the US-led coalition has been refusing to coordinate its airstrikes with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has openly aided groups fighting to topple him.

The meeting showed Trump’ determination to expand ties with Moscow, something he reasserted in his Sunday tweets.

Hailing a new Syria ceasefire deal between Washington and Moscow, Trump wrote “it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!”

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The push for a closer cooperation with Putin raised eyebrows in Washington, where Trump’s critics on both sides of the aisle have been pressuring him to go after Moscow over its alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential vote.

Democrats and major Republican figures alike have accused Russia of running a series of high-profile cyber attacks to change the outcome of the November 8 election.

Some Democrats have taken the allegations to another level, saying Moscow directly intervened to help Trump win.

Trump said Sunday that he addressed the issue in the meeting and Putin “vehemently denied” the accusations.

“Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded,” he said.

Putin said later in an interview that Trump was satisfied with his answers on election hacking.

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