US President Donald Trump will not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin until Moscow releases Ukrainian ships and crew that were seized last month, White House National Security Adviser John Bolton told reporters after a Heritage Foundation event on Thursday.
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th December, 2018) US President Donald Trump will not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin until Moscow releases Ukrainian ships and crew that were seized last month, White House National Security Adviser John Bolton told reporters after a Heritage Foundation event on Thursday."I don't see circumstances in the foreseeable future where such a meeting could take place until the crews and the ships are released," Bolton said as quoted by the The Hill newspaper. "It's something that the president feels strongly about."
Trump called off a planned one-on-one meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Argentina following the late November seizure by Russia of three small Ukrainian naval vessels and more than 20 sailors off the Crimean coast.
Bolton said Trump "ran into" Putin at a dinner during the G-20 summit and that the US president made the same point. The US side felt they could not meet at the G-20 as long as Russia still held the Ukrainian ships and crews, Bolton added.
On November 25, Ukraine's Berdyansk and Nikopol gunboats and the Yany Kapu tugboat illegally crossed the Russian maritime border as they sailed toward the Kerch Strait, the entrance to the Sea of Azov, according to Russian authorities. The Ukrainian vessels were arrested by Russia after failing to respond to a demand to stop.
Following the incident, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree declaring a 30-day period of martial law in several Ukrainian regions located near the Russian border and the coasts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the incident was a provocation prepared in advance as a pretext to introduce martial law in Ukraine ahead of the country's presidential election. The martial law would affect the campaign, set to start in late December, amid Poroshenko's low approval rating, Putin said.
