By: Joe Gould
WASHINGTON — Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed US President-elect Donald Trump is willing to mend ties, but key US lawmakers are striking a defiant chord against Trump’s open admiration for Putin and calling for caution, if not tough action.
Throughout his campaign, Trump has argued for more harmonious relations with Moscow in spite of its aggression in Europe and support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s role in his country’s bloody civil war. On Sunday, Putin, who spoke on the phone with Trump last week, told a news conference, “The president-elect confirmed he is willing to normalize Russian-American relations. I told him the same.”
Lawmakers in Trump’s own party spent last week warning against the the new administration cozying up to the Kremlin. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., a Trump critic and chairman of the Senate panel that governs foreign aid held a conciliatory press conference on Nov. 15, but warned, “I worry about Russia.”
“He wants to reset with Russia; maybe he can do it,” Graham said of Trump. “But here’s my view about Russia: They’re a bad actor in the world, they need to be reined in. We need not concede Crimea. I fear if we don’t let them know the rules of the road pretty early, they may go deeper into Western Ukraine.”
Graham said he wants to assemble an aid package for Russia’s stressed neighbors as well as hearings on “Russia’s misadventures throughout the world,” from Eastern Europe, to the Mideast and to its role in cyber-espionage in the US and elsewhere. The hearings would fuel a case for tougher action by the US government, Graham said.
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