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National Security adviser John Bolton attends a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin wall in Moscow on Oct. 23, 2018. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AP)
MOSCOW — National Security adviser John Bolton held high-level talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, directly confronting Moscow’s anger over U.S. plans to withdraw from a landmark arms control treaty in place since the Cold War.
Bolton described meetings with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu as “very interesting” and “very productive.” But it was unclear whether Bolton made any headway on Russian objections to President Trump’s pledge to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF.
“Defense Minister Shoigu is aware of the larger global context, that this is a bilateral treaty from the Cold War days,” Bolton told the BBC. “Technology has changed, strategic reality has changed, and we both have to deal with it.”
Trump claims Russia has violated the INF treaty. The Kremlin denies any violations and says scrapping the treaty would be a “dangerous” development and could spark a new arms race.
“Of course, there are some weak spots,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the INF treaty on Tuesday, before Bolton’s planned meeting with Putin. “However, the dismantlement of this treaty without proposing anything new is obviously not what we would welcome.”
President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the INF treaty in 1987, leading to the elimination of an entire category of nuclear missiles and the removal of more than 2,500 of them from installations across Europe.
Despite Trump’s announcement of a withdrawal, Russian officials struck a conciliatory tone in public for Bolton’s visit.
[How China plays into Trump’s views on arms control treaty]
In brief remarks to the news media, Shoigu told Bolton the Helsinki summit in July between Putin and Trump had led to a “gradual restoration of bilateral dialogue.”
“I am confident that even small steps will benefit our relations and will help rebuild trust,” the defense minister said, according to the Interfax news agency. “There are vast numbers of problems in the world that we could tackle through joint efforts.”
Bolton’s visit to Moscow was his second in his role as Trump’s national security adviser, signaling the Trump administration’s intention to maintain contact with Russia despite the uproar in Washington over its interference in the 2016 election.
After meeting with his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev on Monday, Bolton told the Echo of Moscow radio station he had raised the issue in his talks with Russian officials.
“The point I made to Russian colleagues today was that I didn’t think, whatever they had done in terms of meddling in the 2016 election, that they had any effect on it, but what they have had an effect in the United States is to sow enormous distrust of Russia,” Bolton said. “I said, just from a very coldblooded cost benefit ratio, that you shouldn’t meddle in our elections because you’re not advancing Russian interest, and I hope that was persuasive to them.”
Bolton deployed the symbolism of wreath-laying to both signal respect for Kremlin authority and to show criticism of repression of the political opposition in Moscow.
He laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Kremlin wall. He did the same at the unofficial memorial just outside the Kremlin wall marking the spot where opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was killed in 2015.
“Boris Nemtsov tried to make Russia more free and more flourishing,” the U.S. Embassy said on its Russian-language Twitter account. “His memory continues to inspire people.”
Read more
Analysis: What the INF Treaty means for the West
American ambassador to NATO sets off diplomatic incident with nuclear edge
Watch: Trump says U.S. with pull out of INF Treaty
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