Helsinki Summit

WASHINGTON, D.C. – (ANALYSIS) After over a year and a half of anticipation, the first formal meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was certainly a momentous occasion, but hardly for the intended reasons.
It remains too early to definitively tell whether Helsinki will go down in history as the beginning of a new stage of rapprochement between Washington and Moscow or the trigger for a new downward plunge in bilateral relations between the two rivals. But the signs from the U.S., so far, are very, very grim.

The summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has finally taken place in Helsinki to thunderous condemnation on the part of many in the West.
Some talk luridly of the beginning of the end of the West.  Others talk hysterically of treason.

Public reactions to an open letter from academics, journalists and politicians asking for co-existence with Russia show many Americans don’t buy the media’s bellicose spin, as Norman Solomon explains. By Norman Solomon Throughout the day before the summit in Helsinki,…Read more →

This article was first published by Consortium News and is republished with their permission.
The reaction of the U.S. establishment media and several political leaders to President Donald Trump’s press conference after his summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday has been stunning.

It is when the hornet’s nest gets beaten and knocked out of the tree that the hornets get really dangerous. It is when the fire ant hill gets stirred with a stick and dug up that the ground seethes with angry ants who are ready to bite anything to defend themselves. And so it is with the elements of the American Deep State, as their vaunted hopes of hanging Trump from the noose of RussiaGate got beaten to the ground and destroyed, not only by the president’s meeting with the Russian head of state, but also by the response from President Vladimir Putin himself after the summit.

This is the official text of the the joint news conference by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the Presidents of the United States and Russia, following their summit meeting in Helsinki as published by the Kremlin’s website.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, ladies and gentlemen,
The talks with President of the United States Donald Trump were held in a candid and business-like atmosphere. I think they were quite successful and beneficial.

John Bolton’s visit to Moscow on Wednesday is one of the highest-level meetings between Russian and US officials under the Trump administration.  Bolton arrive in Moscow to pave the way for Trump-Putin bilateral talks to be held on July 16th in Finland.
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss John Bolton’s trip to Moscow, what to expect from a Trump-Putin summit, and how Bolton may be building a strategy where Russia and the US mend fences.

Sputnik News reported Friday that French-Israeli analyst Mylene Doublet O’Kane believes that the June 23th halt in aid to Syrian rebels in the south of that country by the Americans is a signal to Moscow ahead of the the planned July 16th meeting between President Trump and his Russian counterpart President Vladimir Putin.

RT reported Friday evening that Russia has never considered handing Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee turned whistleblower to the United States in exchange for easing sanctions.