White House national security adviser John Bolton says that he has discussed Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Bolton, who met with Putin in Moscow on June 27, 2018, told CBS’s Face The Nation that “President Putin was pretty clear with me about it and my response was we’re going to have to agree to disagree on Ukraine.”
Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump are scheduled to hold their first one-on-one summit in Helsinki on July 16, 2018.
On June 29, 2018, Trump declined to rule out recognizing Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
Asked by reporters on Air Force One whether reports about him dropping Washington’s longstanding opposition to the annexation were true, Trump said, “We’re going to have to see.”
This article originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Follow @RFERL on Twitter.
