The Kremlin has said Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump may not issue a joint statement following their “difficult” summit in Helsinki on Monday, suggesting a conflict over Russian interference in the US election was tripping up talks before they even began.
The newspaper Kommersant reported last week that Moscow had passed a draft statement to Washington, where officials demanded that it include a guarantee that Russian intelligence agencies’ meddling in the 2016 election would not be repeated.
However, on Friday, Mr Putin’s spokesman said a “joint communique is not a mandatory attribute of such meetings”.
The day before, he had admitted the talks would be “difficult” given the “extent of the disagreements on the agenda”.
Mr Trump similarly played down the prospect of Mr Putin admitting to election meddling during a joint press conference with Theresa May on Friday.
“I know you’ll ask will we be talking about meddling. And I will absolutely bring that up,” the US president said, adding: “I don’t think you’ll have any ‘Gee, I did it’.”
Read the article by Alec Luhn and Ben Riley-Smith in the Australian Financial Times (from The Telegraph, London).