Focus on hotspots

President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin discussed what Trump again dismissed as the “Russian Hoax” in their first known phone call since the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election meddling. Putin chuckled about Mueller’s findings, Trump said.

During their conversation on Friday, which the White House and Kremlin said lasted more than an hour, they also discussed a possible three-party arms control pact with China, North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, Ukraine and the crisis in Venezuela, where Moscow is propping up the current government over the US-backed opposition. “We had a good conversation about many things,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump said the two leaders were considering a new nuclear agreement “where we make less and they make less. And maybe even where we get rid of some of the tremendous firepowers that we have right now.” He said they had discussed the possibility of including China in the deal and that China would “very much would like to be a part of” it. But more interesting, perhaps, was what was left unsaid.

Trump said that, at no point, did he warn Putin not to meddle in the next election. And while he and Putin did discuss Mueller’s findings, they appeared to gloss over Mueller’s description of the extensive efforts Russia took to interfere in the 2016 election, including the 25 Russians indicted for that effort.