MOSCOW — No sooner had Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump had their first face-to-face encounter, July 7 at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, than a new Russia-themed scandal engulfed Washington. Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who had met with Donald Trump Jr. on June 9, 2016, may not have been sent by the Kremlin, as some Moscow insiders argue. However, the scrutiny of the meeting limits the Trump administration in its dealings with Russia, presumably affecting agreements reached in Hamburg, including on Syria. To understand why, one must take into account a number of contextual and structural factors in Russian foreign policymaking and current US-Russia relations in general.

Asked what Russia made of the allegations of collusion involving the US president’s campaign and his son, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he had learned about the story from TV reports. “This morning, when I turned on the TV, all the Western TV channels were discussing that. It is amazing how serious people can blow things out of proportion,” he remarked.

Lavrov went on to criticize reporting on the story, stating, “If journalists are ready to work only on the basis of unsubstantiated statements and are not prepared to take into account the fact that there is no hard evidence, then I can’t do anything.”

In Washington, the president was on the defensive, trying to alter the impression that he had been too soft on Putin at their meeting. In an interview with Reuters, Trump claimed that he had been “tough” with Putin, which some Russian reporters interpreted as an “evolution” of his previous statements. Commenting on the situation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “The US president was asking clear and direct questions that were of interest to him, and Putin gave him comprehensive and reassuring answers. I don’t see any ‘evolution’ here.”