HAMBURG, July 8: President Donald Trump did what he had to do: He confronted Vladimir Putin about the issue of Russian interference in last year’s U.S. elections during his much-anticipated first meeting with the Russian president.

Under intense pressure to do so from his Democratic opponents and even some fellow Republicans, Trump would have been pilloried even before he got home from his European trip had he not broached the subject.

The president can now point to the Putin meeting when challenged on whether he’s been tough enough on the Russians.

But it’s still to be seen how forcefully Trump will deal with the issue going forward to prevent future meddling and to ensure consequences for what’s already occurred.

“If anything, we’ve seen Russia continue to pursue similar tactics in the French election. If anything, it feels to be intensifying, and if we now say we’re done with this, we are not adequately protecting our country,” said Heather Conley, a Europe expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Without knowing exactly what Trump said to Putin on the issue during in their two-hours-plus meeting, it’s hard to know whether Trump’s approach toward to the matter has shifted significantly.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who sat in on the meeting and briefed journalists afterward, said Trump opened the session by “raising the concerns of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.”

Trump pressed Putin on the matter more than once, Tillerson said. Putin, in turn, denied involvement and asked for proof.

“The fact that the issue came up should not be a surprise,” said Derek Chollet, a former Obama administration official and senior adviser for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, adding that it “would have been a shock had the issue not come up.”

What matters, Chollet said, are the specifics of what the two presidents discussed about election meddling, the points Trump agreed or disagreed with, and how much Putin dominated the conversation.

Tillerson said the leaders agreed to work together on staying out of each other’s elections processes.

But Trump has sent mixed signals about how seriously he regards the matter.

Deeply frustrated by the suggestion that his 2016 victory may have been tainted, Trump has held back from fully endorsed the findings of multiple U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in last year’s presidential election to help him win.

Just Thursday, the day before he and Putin met, Trump leveled his latest critique of America’s intelligence apparatus while standing on Polish soil, waffling on whether Russia was involved and saying that Moscow was probably behind the meddling but that other countries may be guilty, too.

“Nobody really knows,” he said.

Trump has tried to shift the focus away from what steps he will take to safeguard U.S. elections to what then-President Barack Obama did after he was briefed before the election about what Russia was up to. Trump has alleged that Obama didn’t do anything to stop Russia because he expected Democrat Hillary Clinton to win anyway. Obama, for his part, has said that he confronted Putin about the issue when they were at an international conference last year and told the Russian to knock it off.

Tillerson said Trump and Putin are “rightly” focused on moving relations between their countries forward from what he called an “intractable disagreement.”

But U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said that whatever Trump told Putin would have carried more weight if the president hadn’t “equivocated” about who was behind the election interference.

“It would also have had more force if he had not again criticized the integrity of our intelligence agencies, among whom there is unwavering agreement about Russia’s active interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Warner said.

Thomas Wright, a senior fellow and director of the U.S.-Europe center at the Brookings Institution, said the Trump administration hasn’t shown itself to be sincere about wanting to prevent future attacks and has shown a determination to build a partnership with Russia, despite the worries of some European allies who fear Moscow’s aggressive tactics.

“They’re basically checking the box on certain things they feel like they’ll get in trouble if they don’t do,” Wright said.

Trump will get some credit for raising the elections issue with Putin. But he still has plenty of convincing to do regarding his resolve in standing up to the Russians.-AP

HAMBURG, July 7: President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shared a brief encounter Friday ahead of their highly anticipated meeting on the sidelines of an international summit in Germany.

The two leaders had a brief encounter upon arrival at the G-20 summit of industrialized and developing nations, shaking hands and exchanging a few words. Their sit-down meeting, which may tackle a number of vexing foreign policy issues from the conflict in Syria to Russia’s provocations in Ukraine, will be overshadowed by the investigations into whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Moscow during last year’s presidential election.

In the lead-up to the meeting, Trump, during a speech in Warsaw on Thursday, urged Russia to “cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere and its support for hostile regimes — including Syria and Iran — and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.”

But much of the focus — both in Washington and Moscow — will be on whether Trump broaches the issue of Russia’s meddling in the election.

Before the meeting Friday, Trump tweeted that he was looking forward to the visit, saying there was “much to discuss.” During a news conference in Poland on Thursday, he again refused to accept the conclusion by multiple U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered to try to help Trump win last November. Trump said it could have been Russia, but that other countries could have meddled, too.

“Nobody really knows for sure,” Trump said.

U.S. lawmakers and federal investigators continue to look into Russia’s election interference, along with possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russian government officials. That puts Trump under intense scrutiny over how he handles the sit-down with Putin, a former Russian intelligence agent known to come to meetings like this well-prepared.

The White House has scheduled 35 minutes for the meeting, raising questions about how much ground the leaders can be expected to cover.

Trump, who likes to have neatly packaged achievements to pair with high-profile meetings, may seek some concessions from Russia to show he’s delivering progress and helping restore a once-productive relationship that he recently described as being at an “all-time low.” Putin would almost certainly want something in return.

The list of issues ranges from Syria to Iran to Ukraine, and now North Korea, following Pyongyang’s test this week of a missile capable of striking the U.S.

Russia wants the U.S. to return the two compounds in New York and Maryland that were seized by the Obama administration as punishment for election meddling. It also wants the U.S. to ease sanctions it imposed on Russia after Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula, and over Russia’s support of separatist elements in Ukraine.

The U.S. wants a resumption of adoptions of Russian children by American parents, which Russia banned in 2012, along with an end to what it claims is intensifying harassment of U.S. diplomats and other officials stationed in Russia.

Lawmakers in both political parties say Trump must confront Putin over the election.

Several senior Democratic U.S. senators served notice Thursday that Trump would be in “severe dereliction” of his presidential duty if he fails to confront Putin over the issue, telling Trump in a letter that he must make clear that Russia’s interference in U.S. democracy will not be tolerated.

“The upcoming elections cannot be a playground for President Putin,” said Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York; Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat; and the top Democrats on the Intelligence, Armed Services, and Foreign Relations committees.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said this week that he will “raise holy hell” if Trump goes soft on Putin. “It is very important for us to make a statement that Russia does not meddle not just in our elections, here and the future, but in our allies,’” he said.

Every detail of the Trump-Putin meeting will be scrutinized, from their facial expressions to the color of their neckties to how they shake hands.

“The big thing to watch will be what Putin asks for and what he offers in return and whether there’s a sense of receptivity on the president’s part,” said Derek Chollet, executive vice president and senior adviser for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund, a Washington think tank.

Before Putin, Trump will try to manage another rocky international relationship when he meets with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Pena Nieto had been scheduled to visit the White House shortly after Trump took office, but he scrapped the trip at the last minute due to disagreement with Trump over the U.S. president’s insistence that Mexico pay for the wall he has vowed to build along the U.S.-Mexico border to deter illegal immigration. Pena Nieto insists Mexico will not pay.

Trump has vowed to tighten border security and crack down on undocumented workers and drug cartels, but he has been less firm on getting Mexico to pay for the wall.

He reassured Pena Nieto in April that he would not pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which involves the U.S., Mexico and Canada. But Trump said he could still withdraw if he concludes that a renegotiated pact would not produce “a fair deal” for all sides.

The Putin meeting is the highlight of a hectic, four-day European visit for Trump, who addressed thousands of Poles in an outdoor speech in Warsaw, Poland, on Thursday. He met in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel, the summit host, and had dinner with two Asian allies — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in — to discuss North Korea’s aggression.

The Group of 20 gathering of the world’s leading rich and developing nations is the first since Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, deeply disappointing Merkel and other U.S. allies who had hoped to maintain momentum in battling climate change. Even as Trump has said in vague terms he would like to renegotiate the Paris accord, European leaders have vowed to press forward.-AP