WASHINGTON: A defiant US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he is looking forward to another meeting with Vladimir Putin, assailing media who failed to recognise the “great success” of their first summit as the “enemy of the people”.

Trump has come under bipartisan fire at home for what many saw as his unsettling embrace of the Russian strongman this week in Helsinki — and his seeming disavowal of his own intelligence agencies and their assessment that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election.

The backlash has thrust the US leader onto the defensive — leading to several days of backtracking and conflicting statements from both the president and the White House.

“The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media,” he wrote in his latest, combative tweet early Thursday.

“The Fake News Media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war,” Trump said.

“They are pushing so recklessly hard and hate the fact that I’ll probably have a good relationship with Putin.

“I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed,” he continued.

Trump listed these as “stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace, North Korea and more.” “There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems... but they can ALL be solved!” he said.

According to opinion polls published on Thursday, a large majority of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the summit — but members of his Republican party approved by a wide margin.

Putin chides Trump’s opponents

Russian President Vladimir Putin called his first summit with President Donald Trump a success but warned on Thursday that Trump’s opponents in the US are hampering any progress on what they discussed, such as limiting their nuclear arsenals or ending the Syrian war.

In his first public comments about the summit, Putin told Russian diplomats that US-Russian relations are “in some ways worse than during the Cold War”, but that his meeting with Trump on Monday allowed them to start on “the path to positive change”. “It’s naive to think that the problems would be solved in a few hours. But no one expected that,” Putin said.

“We will see how things develop further,” Putin said, evoking unnamed “forces” in the US trying to prevent any improvement in relations and “putting narrow party interests above the national interest.”

Putin had both criticism and praise for Trump in a broad speech about Russian foreign policy.

The Russian leader praised Trump’s mediation efforts in North Korea, but slammed his decision to pull out of the international accord curbing Iran’s nuclear activities.

He also lashed out at Europe and US-dominated Nato saying Russia would hit back with an “equivalent response” to Nato bases near Russia’s borders and other “aggressive steps”. He didn’t elaborate.

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2018