Washington • The U.S. ambassador to Russia on Thursday described President Donald Trump’s one-on-one meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Helsinki later this month as an accomplishment “in itself.”
Briefing reporters ahead of the trip, the ambassador, Jon Huntsman, was asked what the president hoped to achieve by meeting yet again with the leader of a country U.S. intelligence officials have concluded undermined U.S. democracy by meddling in the 2016 election to help Trump win, among a long list of hostile actions.
“You know, I think the fact that we’re having a summit at this level, at this time in history, is a deliverable in itself,” said Huntsman, adding that he “wouldn’t underplay at all the importance of actually sitting down for the first time in a meeting-summit environment and discussing the issues that really matter most.