Vladimir Putin will speak to Donald Trump by telephone on Saturday, the first conversation between the leaders since the US president's inauguration and after top Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway told Fox News that removing US sanctions on Russia was "under consideration".
Diplomats and politicians in many world capitals will be watching the call with unease, as Mr Trump's positive rhetoric on Russia threatens to disrupt the western consensus of keeping pressure on Moscow over intervention in Ukraine. Many US senators, including from the Republican Party, are also deeply concerned about the prospect of a major rapprochement with Moscow.
Mr Trump has been steadfast in his praise for Mr Putin and Russia, and ascended to the presidency amid allegations of Russian interference in the election campaign .
The new US president has hinted he could look at removing sanctions on Russia, and has suggested the US and Russia could work together in Syria, where Russia is allied with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
Asked on Fox News whether sanctions imposed by the Obama administration were on the table during Saturday’s phone call, Ms Conway said “all of that is under consideration”. “If another nation which has considerable resources wishes to join together with US to try to defeat and eradicate radical Islamic terrorism, we’ll be listening,” she added.
Mr Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Russian president would congratulate Mr Trump on taking office and would launch a discussion on the current bilateral relationship. He said it was unlikely there would be specific agreements reached in the initial call.
“This is the first telephone contact since President Trump took office, so one should hardly expect that this phone call will involve substantive discussions across the whole range of issues. We’ll see, let’s be patient,” Mr Peskov said.
Angela Merkel
Ms Conway, a White House senior aide, said Mr Trump and Mr Putin were likely to discuss efforts to combat terrorism. She told This Morning on CBS: "I assume they will discuss, in the interests of their respective countries, how to come together and work together on issues where you can find common ground and where these two nations could maybe defeat radical Islamic terrorism."
Mr Trump was also due to speak with German chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday, a source in Berlin told Reuters, in a call likely to focus on Russia policy.
Earlier this month, Mr Trump tweeted, in reference to the US and Russia: “Both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!”
Last July, he said at a press conference: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with people? Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along, as an example, with Russia? I am all for it.”
Mr Trump’s warm feelings towards Russia became one of the biggest talking points in the aftermath of his surprise election victory, with US intelligence agencies releasing a report commissioned by Barack Obama which drew the conclusion that Russia had interfered in the election with the aim of getting Mr Trump elected.
Later, a 35-page dossier of unverified claims about Mr Trump’s supposed Russia links was published by BuzzFeed, causing Mr Trump to erupt in fury and call the documents “fake news”.
The dossier was compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele as opposition research on Trump, but he was so alarmed by what he found that he passed it to the FBI.
The claims in the dossier, that Mr Trump had been compromised by the Russians during trips to Moscow, and that members of his entourage had links with Russian intelligence, have not been corroborated. However, US intelligence agencies felt strongly enough about the reliability of Mr Steele as a source to follow up on them.
Prostitutes
Russia has vehemently denied any interference in the electoral process, and Putin laughed off claims Russia had compromised Mr Trump, saying he doubted Mr Trump would use prostitutes, as alleged in the leaked dossier. He said those behind the dossier were “worse than prostitutes”.
Rumours have swirled in Washington in the past days that Mr Trump could be readying a swift end to US sanctions on Russia . There are currently several sets of sanctions, not all of which Mr Trump could remove by executive order. The Magnitsky Act, which targets corrupt officials, was passed by Congress and will not be simple to repeal. However, the several rounds of sanctions over Russian intervention in east Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea could be undone with a stroke of Mr Trump’s pen.
Should Washington end sanctions, it will put EU governments in a difficult position, as they will not want to be seen as softening the line against Moscow, but at the same time European businesses will not appreciate the competitive advantages that US business would receive from a unilateral cancellation of sanctions.
Mr Peskov said he was unaware of any plans to lift the sanctions.
There has been a cautious optimism in Moscow in recent weeks about the prospect of a new era of Russia-US relations in which Moscow is not lectured for human rights abuses, and is given free reign to act as it pleases in neighbouring countries. State television has given Mr Trump largely positive coverage, a sharp departure from the anti-US rhetoric of recent years. A recent survey found that just 4 per cent of Russians thought Mr Trump would be a bad president.
Guardian/Reuters