Putin, Trump did not discuss sanctions issue - Russian ambassador to US

MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump did not discuss sanctions on Moscow at their Helsinki meeting, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov told reporters on Wednesday. "The sanctions issue in itself was not discussed," he said in response to a question. "There was a discussion of economic cooperation issues," the ambassador added. According to him, Putin "never raises the sanctions issue and never asks that sanctions on Russia be removed." "It was not our decision, we do not recognize these sanctions but we will work under the conditions that we currently have," Antonov pointed out. The United States started to impose sanctions on Moscow over the Ukrainian events and Crimea’s reunification with Russia in March 2014. A number of Russian banks and companies, as well as state officials, were blacklisted, the exports of US goods, technologies and services to Crimea were banned, as well as US investment in the peninsula. Sanctions have been repeatedly extended and expanded since then. Putin-Trump meeting The first full-fledged talks between the presidents of Russia and the United States took place in Finland’s capital of Helsinki on Monday. The one-on-one meeting between Putin and Trump lasted more than two hours, later delegation members joined the presidents for a working lunch. The Russian delegation was composed of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov. The US delegation included Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. The expanded session also took about two hours. Both presidents said after the Helsinki summit that a big step forward had been taken. Read more