Russia’s relations with the West steadily worsened throughout 2018, and hopes that the presumed positive chemistry between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, might help find some way to reverse this trend never materialized. The long-awaited full-scale Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, was a PR disaster that caused a mega-storm of criticism in the U.S. media and rebukes by both parties in Congress. Trump was accused of being too friendly and submissive at the joint press conference after the talks, though apparently nothing much of substance was in fact decided or traded off (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, July 19, 23, 2018). Tensions, misunderstandings and punitive sanctions continued to pile up.
A year of mounting U.S.-Russian tensions, and more to come in 2019
By Ukrainian Weekly Editor6 Mins Read