[Guardian] It is a blossoming bromance. In what one US-based critic called a "first Tinder date", Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin talked for two and a quarter hours on Friday instead of their scheduled 30 minutes."I think there was just such a level of engagement and exchange, and neither one of them wanted to stop," US secretary of State Rex Tillerson said afterwards. "Several times I had to remind the president, and people were sticking their heads in the door. And they sent in the first lady at one point to see if she could get us out of there, and that didn’t work either."
There were sighs of relief in Washington that Trump, an erratic and volatile president with little foreign policy experience, had avoided a major gaffe. The news website Axios summed it up: "Trump survives the Putin meeting."
But diplomats and experts said this was hardly cause for celebration. Thomas Countryman, former US acting undersecretary for arms control and international security, commented: "It’s an indication of how rapidly our standards are falling when we’re reasonably pleased that President Trump has not made an obvious error."
Pre-meeting hype had focused on whether Trump would confront Putin over Russia’s interference in the US election. He delivered, according to Tillerson, pressing the issue repeatedly. But Putin denied it and Tillerson later admitted that the two leaders had focused on how to move on from here. There seemed little indication that Trump had held Putin’s feet to the fire.
Trump had accepted Putin’s assurances, Countryman said: "It certainly was the minimum that any US president should have done in this situation. I’m glad he brought it up. What we don’t know ‐ and may never know ‐ is what he replied when Vladimir Putin looked him in the eye and falsely said: ’It was not us.’" Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed Trump had accepted Putin’s assurances, although the US disputed that.