The World According to Russia

What really happened at #HELLinHELSINKI2018 may never be known, unless the translator is compelled to tell us. We saw the American president's version of what Supposably happened; I thought it would be fun to check out what the Russian President said happened.  

Let's take a look

Thank you so much. Shall we start working, I guess? 

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. 

So, it would seem there was some deal-making going on, right? Because otherwise, this would have been just a discussion, a conversation, or 'a couple of white presidents sitting around talking' I think.  

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 remote past, is a vestige of the past.

What's not clear is whether Putin thinks Russia and America share an ideology? He and Trump may share one - you know, building hotels for rich people in all the right places, for example, but I'm not sure anyone else agrees our two countries share the same ideology, much less acute one (sorry, couldn't resist). 

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, the snowballing problems in the economy, environmental risks and other sets of challenges.The situation in the world changed dramatically.

Right: Russia supports Assad, the butcher of Syria, and they continue having designs on Ukraine and Crimea (those hotels, you know), and our economy is doing just fine, we're told daily (hourly?) and our environmental issues will be gone soon with Trump's deregulation, and climate change doesn't exist, so what the heck is Putin talking about other than his own aggressive tendencies (and our bashing of NATO?)

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.

If would have been interesting if there had been 'partners' in the room, rather than just Vlad and Donny to join ranks. 

Today's negotiations reflected our joint wish, our joint wish with President Trump to redress this negative situation in the 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.

Again with the negotiations.  What were the two of them negotiating?

As major nuclear powers, we bear special responsibility for maintaining international security... 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.

#ShowTheNote. #ShowTheNote. #ShowTheNote.

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.

Here comes a good part - from the hacker to the hacked; from the meddler to the meddled:

We favor the continued cooperation in counter-terrorism and maintaining cyber security.

He mentioned the "truly great, one of the best ever"according to Trump World Cup as an example of our cooperation, but he didn't mention the 2016 president election, which was a supreme example of "cooperation" by the two sides, would you agree?

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.

Abounding over to Syria, which Trump mentioned as a topic of conversation

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 leadership on this issue and organize the interaction to overcome humanitarian crisis and help Syrian refugees to go back to their homes...

And he talked about how we at least communicate enough to keep from having "dangerous incidents and unintentional collisions in the air and on the ground. As when Russian fighter jets buzzed our ships and stuff. 

Also crushing terrorists in the south west 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. 

Mr. President paid special attention to the issue during today's negotiations. And I would like to confirm that Russia is interested in this development and this will act accordingly. Thus far, we will make a step toward creating a lasting peace in compliance with the respective resolutions of the Security Council, for instance the resolution 338.

He talked about the Korean peninsula and and thanked Trump for his personal engagement there., and also talked about the US withdrawal from the JCPOA - that's the Iran nuclear deal. 

Well, the U.S., our U.S. counterparts are aware of our posture. Let me remind you that thanks to the Iranian nuclear deal, Iran became the most controlled country in the world. It submitted to the control of IAEA. It effectively ensures the exclusively peaceful nature of Iranian nuclear program and strengthens the nonproliferation regime.

And he mentioned Ukraine. 

...we paid special attention to the bona fide implementation of Minsk agreements by Kiev. At the same time, the United States could be more decisive and nudging the Ukrainian leadership and encourage it work actively in this.

And the economy.

We paid more attention to economic ties and economic cooperation. It's clear that both countries, the business of both countries, are interested in this. American delegation was one of the largest delegations in the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. It featured over 500 representatives from American businesses.

We agreed, and President Trump, we agreed to create the high level working group that would bring together captains of Russian and American business, entrepreneurs and businessmen know better how to articulate this successful business cooperation, will let them think and make their proposals and suggestions in this regard.

Oh yeah - the elections. The part where the president believed the foreign dictator instead of the entire US intelligence community.

Once again, President Trump mentioned the issue of the so-called interference of Russia when the American elections and I had to reiterate things I said several times, including during our personal contacts that the Russian state has never interfered and is not going to interfere in the internal American affairs, including the election process.

And there was the Independence Day visit to Russia by a Republican congressional delegation, which was well received there, if not so much here.

As far as...I think you know that recently we hosted the American congressmen delegation and now it's perceived and portrayed almost as a historic event, although it should have been just a current affairs, just business as usual. And in this regard, we mentioned this proposal to the president. We have to think about the practicalities of our cooperation but also about the rationale, the underlying logic of it.

As to the future, Putin is looking for people with expertise to help make it better.

And we have to engage experts on bilateral relationship, who know history and the background of our relationship. The idea is to create an expert council that would include political scientists, prominent diplomats and former military experts in both countries, who would look for points of contact between two countries, that would look for ways on putting the relationship on the trajectory of growth.

And finally:

In general, we are glad the outcome of our first full-scale meeting because previously we only had a chance to talk briefly on international fora. We had a good conversation with President Trump and I hope that we start to understand each other better and I'm grateful to Donald for it. Clearly, there are some challenges left when we were not able to clear all the backlog but I think that we made the first important step in this direction.

Thank you for your attention.

Trump: We love you, Vlad!