After more than two hours of private talks with his U.S. counterpart Donald J. Trump in Helsinki on July 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would maintain its gas transit through Ukraine, even after the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
“Moreover, we stand ready to extend this transit contract that is about to expire next year if the dispute between the economic entities will be settled in the Stockholm arbitration court,” Putin said at a joint presser with Trump following their private meeting.
Ukraine state oil and gas producer Naftogaz won a landmark case against Russia in February, when a Stockholm arbitration court ruled that Gazprom must pay its Ukrainian counterpart $2.6 billion for failing to deliver agreed gas volumes to Ukraine for transit to Europe. Naftogaz is looking for ways to keep Russian gas transit as it brings billions of dollars in state revenue annually for Ukraine.
Trump added that both presidents are competitors on the Nord Stream 2 issue and that he personally is not sure that it’s in the interest of Germany to carry out its construction. He added, however, that the word “competitors” is used in a “positive sense” referring to competition as a positive phenomenon.
Ukraine was mentioned only twice during the press conference, held after the biggest official meeting between the two presidents, as they exchanged smiles and compliments with each other.
When asked about the status of Russian-annexed Crimea, Putin said that he disagreed with Trump’s position.
“He (Trump) stands firmly by it, he continues to maintain that it was illegal to annex it,” Putin said. “Our (Russian) viewpoint is different, we held a referendum in strict compliance with the UN charter and the international legislation.”
Trump responded with a smile.
At the G7 summit in June, the U.S. president reportedly called Crimea Russian because its people speak Russian, according to a Buzzfeed report.
Observers widely criticized Trump’s comments during the press conference, saying that Trump seemed to trust Putin more than his own country’s intelligence reports regarding Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections.
CNN’s TV host Anderson Cooper called on-air Trump’s behavior “perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit in front of a Russian leader” he has ever seen.
Security expert Mark Galeotti wrote on Twitter that the “Trump-Putin presser was everything the Kremlin realistically could have hoped for.”
John Brennan, a former U.S. CIA director, called Trump’s comments “imbecilic.”
“He is wholly in the pocket of Putin,” he wrote on Twitter.
