Helsinki summit: Donald Trump pays major price for friendship with Moscow

US President Donald Trump (L) and Russia's President Vladimir Putin shake hands before attending a joint press conference after a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018. The US and Russian leaders opened an historic summit in Helsinki, with Donald Trump promising an "extraordinary relationship" and Vladimir Putin saying it was high time to thrash out disputes around the world. / AFP PHOTO / Yuri KADOBNOV

Donald Trump has paid a major price for a summit with Vladimir Putin that was a partial thaw, a but hardly a warm embrace.

Such was Trump’s determination to carve out a personal relationship with the Russian President that he did things which are now creating a furore back in the US.

He threw the US intelligence agencies collectively under the bus for their conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential elections.

Those conclusions were unanimous across US agencies and were backed by the remarkable detail contained in the affidavits against the 12 Russian spies announced at the weekend.

For Trump to stand in front of Putin and the world and cast doubt upon the findings of his own spy agencies while lending credibility to Putin’s blanket denial of Russian involvement must have reeked of treason to some Republicans back in Washington.

Trump has taken a wilfully blind view of the evidence in order to curry favour with Putin and not derail their summit. What’s more, he chose not to criticise Russia over the interference but rather blamed the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller for the subsequent fallout.

That is a high price for any US President to pay. So what did Trump get in return?

Both Trump and Vladimir Putin declared their Helsinki summit a success, but as they spoke the differences remained apparent.

The US president claimed that the US-Russian relationship was already on the improve after their meeting and insisted the summit was worthwhile despite relations being at such a low ebb.

But while both leaders discussed their respective positions, there seemed to be little immediate signs of progress on key issues.

There was obviously no agreement on the question of Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election. Trump asked about it and Putin denied it.

Putin flattered Trump on holding a summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un but chided him for pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. He called for the US to get tougher with Ukraine.

Putin said better co-operation on Syria could be a ‘showcase example’ of what could be achieved if the US and Russia worked more closely together but no details of a new plan emerged.

In the photo opportunities before the press conference Putin’s demeanor was largely neutral, a hint of a smile but nothing more than you could read into the mood of the inscrutable Russian president. Even when Trump posed with the First Lady Melania Trump, Putin remained largely poker-faced.

But it was clearly a happier face than the sour pose Putin struck in the final years when he met with Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama.

Trump chose to meet alone with Putin to try to size him up as a man, just as he did with his one-on-one sit-down North Korea’s Kim Jong-un at the Singapore summit in June.

It’s the way Trump did business in real estate and it’s the way he is most comfortable operating with controversial leaders with whom he wants to strike a rapport. More than anything, this president operates on gut instinct, backing his ability to strike a friendship in the most unlikely of circumstances.

This certainly was one of those. The US has just indicted 12 Russian military spies for interfering in the 2016 US election to tilt it in favor of Trump.

Meanwhile Moscow has increasingly teamed up with Syria’s brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad and has allowed Iran to spread its nefarious tentacles into Syria against the wishes of the US.

It has shown no sign of withdrawing from Crimea, which it annexed in 2014 and has never conceded any responsibility for providing the missile system to rebels that shot down Malaysian Airlines MH17 over East Ukraine in 2014 killing 298 passengers including 38 Australians.

Trump also wants Russia to cut off its illicit assistance to North Korea and said he would discuss with Putin other issues ranging from China to nuclear weapons.

But in trying to become friends with Putin, Trump may have gone too far; especially when we don’t yet know precisely what these two maverick leaders of the world’s largest nuclear weapons states achieved in Helsinki.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.