Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed concerns about
Russian interference in U.S.
elections and waged a bizarre personal attack on an
American prisoner being held in
Moscow after meeting with
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and
President Trump on Tuesday. The disagreements between Russia’s top diplomat and his American counterpart were on full display as soon as Pompeo said at a joint press conference that he’d put his foot down with Moscow and made clear the Trump administration would not put up with
election meddling. “I was clear — it’s unacceptable,” he said. Lavrov replied that
Russia had not seen any proof of election meddling, and when a reporter suggested he could simply “read the Mueller report,” he said there was “no proof of any collusion” in the report. According to a transcript published by Russia's Foreign Ministry, he also cryptically said the
Kremlin was “ready to publicize the correspondence between us and the American administration regarding allegations of interference.”“We will be ready, as soon as
Washington confirms its consent, to publicize these documents that are important to the public,” he was quoted as saying. Reuters separately quoted him as saying: “We suggested to our colleagues that in order to dispel all suspicions that are baseless: Let us publish this close channel of correspondence starting from October 2016 until November 2017 so it would all become very clear to many people.” It was not immediately clear what correspondence he was referring to. Lavrov’s high-level meetings at the
White House with both Pompeo and President Trump on Tuesday sparked some criticism from those who questioned why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not invited instead, given that the U.S. is an ally to
Ukraine in its long-running conflict with Russia. The meetings also transpired shortly after House
Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against Trump over his pressure-campaign on Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political rivals.Trump, meanwhile, made no mention of Ukraine in a tweet summing up his “very good meeting” with Lavrov, a meeting that came just a day after peace talks in
Paris between Zelensky and Russian President
Vladimir Putin, along with the leaders of
France and Germany. Trump said he had also discussed “election meddling” with Lavrov, but gave no further details. Pompeo said he’d also brought up with his Russian counterpart the issue of Paul Whelan, an American and former U.S. Marine being held in Moscow on espionage charges ever since his arrest in late 2018, just a few months after accused Russian agent Maria Butina was arrested in the U.S. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow has repeatedly raised concerns over what it described as a lack of evidence in the case, and Whelan has said through his lawyer that he was set up by a member of Russia’s intelligence service. Lavrov, after noting that the investigation into Whelan was already completed and the indictment filed, launched a personal attack on the 49-year-old American, claiming his lawyers should “advise him how to behave.” Accusing Whelan of “acting defiantly” behind bars, Lavrov claimed he is aggressive toward
prison guards and “threatens to bore into their heads with a drill,” according to a transcript of his comments released by Russia’s Foreign Ministry. Shortly after Lavrov’s allegation, which a lawyer for Whelan reportedly denied, Russia’s Foreign Ministry doubled down and released a photo on
Facebook it said was of a drill similar to the kind Whelan has supposedly threatened to use on prison guards, one apparently used by investigators to bind stacks of documents together.