Presidential PalaceHelsinki, Finland
5:10 P.M. EEST
PRESIDENT PUTIN: (As interpreted.) Distinguished Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: Negotiations with the President of the United States Donald Trump took place in a frank and businesslike atmosphere. I think we can call it a success and a very fruitful round of negotiations.
We carefully analyzed the current status — the present and the future of the Russia–United States relationship; key issues of the global agenda. It’s quite clear to everyone that the bilateral relationship are going through a complicated stage, and yet those impediments — the current tension, the tense atmosphere — essentially have no solid reason behind it.
The Cold War is a thing of past. The era of acute ideological confrontation of the two countries is a thing of the remote past, is a vestige of the past. The situation in the world changed dramatically.
Today, both Russia and the United States face a whole new set of challenges. Those include a dangerous maladjustment of mechanisms for maintaining international security and stability, regional crises, the creeping threats of terrorism and transnational crime. It’s the snowballing problems in the economy, environmental risks, and other sets of challenges. We can only cope with these challenges if we join the ranks and work together. Hopefully, we will reach this understanding with our American partners.
Today’s negotiations reflected our joint wish — our joint wish with President Trump to redress this negative situation and bilateral relationship, outline the first steps for improving this relationship to restore the acceptable level of trust, and going back to the previous level of interaction on all mutual interests issues.
As major nuclear powers, we bear special responsibility for maintaining international security. And it made it vital — and we mentioned this during the negotiations — it’s crucial that we fine-tune the dialogue on strategic stability and global security and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We submitted our American colleagues a note with a number of specific suggestions.
We believe it necessary to work together further to interact on the disarmament agenda, military, and technical cooperation. This includes the extension of the Strategic Offensive Arms Limitation Treaty. It’s a dangerous situation with the global American anti-missile defense system; it’s the implementation issues with the INF treaty; and, of course, the agenda of non-placement of weapons in space.
We favor the continued cooperation in counterterrorism and maintaining cybersecurity. And I’d like to point out specifically that our special services are cooperating quite successfully together. The most recent example is their operational cooperation within the recently concluded World Football Cup.
In general, the contacts among the special services should be put to a system-wide basis — should be brought to a systemic framework. I recall — I reminded President Trump about the suggestion to reestablish the working group on antiterrorism.
We also mentioned a plethora of regional crises. It’s not always that our postures dovetail exactly. And yet, the overlapping and mutual interests abound. We have to look for points of contact and interact closer in a variety of international fora.
Clearly, we mentioned the regional crisis; for instance, Syria. As far as Syria is concerned, the task of establishing peace and reconciliation in this country could be the first showcase example of this successful joint work. Russia and the United States apparently can act proactively and take — assume the leadership on this issue, and organize the interaction to overcome humanitarian crisis, and help Syrian refugees to go back to their homes.
In order to accomplish this level of successful cooperation in Syria, we have all the required components. Let me remind you that both Russian and American military have acquired a useful experience of coordination of their action, established the operational channels of communication which permitted to avoid dangerous incidents and unintentional collisions in the air and in the ground.
Also, crushing terrorists in the southwest of Syria — the south of Syria — should be brought to the full compliance with the Treaty of 1974 about the separation of forces — about separation of forces of Israel and Syria. This will bring peace to Golan Heights and bring a more peaceful relationship between Syria and Israel, and also to provide security of the state of Israel.