Kremlin says Donald Trump's telephone conversations with Vladimir Putin cannot be publicized without its consent
Ever since President Donald Trump’s controversial telephonic talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky rocked US politics, Russia is watching the developments closely. The Kremlin has been, in the past, accused of interfering in the US’ domestic affairs, including influencing the 2016 presidential elections. Although a probe did not find it guilty, the suspicion in America’s public life hasn’t diminished and the Russian leadership is extra cautious about the Ukraine episode.
On September 30, the Kremlin said that transcripts of calls between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin can be published only if there is a mutual agreement, Reuters reported. It may be noted here that while Trump authorized in September the release of the transcripts of his call with Zelensky saying Kiev gave Washington the permission, Zelensky said on September 30 that his government is unlikely to release its version of the call transcript for he felt it would be wrong, said another Reuters report.
Trump has been accused of putting pressure on Zelensky, who came to power this May, to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter over a Ukrainian connection when the Barack Obama administration was in control. Biden, who is a Democratic presidential runner for 2020, was the US vice president at the time while Hunter was working for a Ukrainian gas company. The issue has led to an uproar with the Democrats launching a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump.
Russia, which is not far from headlines when it comes to Trump and America’s relations with Ukraine, is following the events intensely. On September 29, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a Democratic leader from California who is playing a lead role in the anti-Trump initiative, said he also wanted to understand whether the White House was trying to hide more calls with other foreign leaders and the reason behind it. Putin is certainly among those ‘foreign leaders’ and this has left the Kremlin all the more concerned.
The White House has put a restriction on the distribution of memos detailing Trump’s calls with world leaders, including those with Putin and when asked about the Congress seeking publication of the Trump-Putin calls, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the publication was possible only if there was a mutual accord.
Russia hopes Trump-Putin talks remain secret
In September, the Kremlin said it hoped that talks between Putin and Trump remained secret in the wake of the eruption over Trump’s call with Zelensky. Trump reportedly has gone to “extraordinary lengths” to guard the transcripts of his face-to-face talks with Putin. Peskov was quoted by Russia's RBC news website as saying on September 27: “Of course, we would like to hope that in our bilateral relations, where there are already a lot of very serious problems, we won’t reach such situations.”
Peskov told the media in a conference call that Russia would consider it if there were signals from the US about it (releasing call transcripts).
The Russian official though said that “diplomatic practice doesn’t envisage such publications” and added that the matter is America’s internal one, Moscow has reasons to feel both relaxed and concerned over the Trump-Zelensky phone-call issue.
Russia's reasons to be elated and alarmed
The Kremlin has reasons to be happy for Zelensky made some unfavorable remarks about German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanual Macron during his call with Trump. These could hit the embattled East European country’s efforts to get close to the European Union, thereby making Russia, which is always in the lookout to corner Ukraine diplomatically, happy.
But at the same time, the call has also made the Russians less confident about Trump - an incumbent on which the Putin regime had pinned hope after he came to office. Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson of Russia’s foreign ministry, said on state television recently that the release of the Trump-Zelensky call by the White House would make other heads of states wary. "Everyone understands after this scandal that it's dangerous to make calls and conduct talks with Washington," she was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Russia has denied throughout the charges of having meddled in the US presidential elections of 2016 and derided the investigation conducted by US special counsel Robert Mueller into the same, as did Trump. Mueller eventually found that there was no evidence to corroborate the charges though he charged 12 Russian military intelligence officials with the act of breaking into the Democratic Party's computers and email accounts of officials involved with Hillary Clinton’s campaign.