On the President's Desk: Russia
Official contact between Russia and the new United States of America began in 1776 following the Declaration of Independence. Russia remained neutral during the American Revolution, though it favored the US over the British. Future President John Quincy Adams served as Minister to Russia from 1809 to 1814 following the establishment of formal diplomatic ties. Adams arrived in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg in October 1809 and established a productive working relationship with the Russian government. He befriended Tsar Alexander I of Russia and his wife Louisa was popular at the Russian court.
During the Civil War Russia supported the Union against the Confederacy, and its support was a factor which deterred the British from intervening. Russia sold its territory in North America, Alaska, to the United States in 1867. In 1905 Russia and Japan turned to US President Theodore Roosevelt to negotiate a peace that resulted in the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War.
From 1820 until 1917, over 3 million immigrants arrived in the U.S. from Russia Empire. Most were Jews or Poles. The relationship between the two countries changed with the Russian Revolution as the U.S. was one of the nations which participated in the allied military intervention against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. The US refused to formally recognize the Soviet government and did not re-establish diplomatic relations until November of 1933. The United States and the Soviet Union, along with Great Britain, formed the Big Three major Allies against the Axis powers during World War II.
When the war ended, tensions arose between those allied nations with democratic governments and those with communist governments, primarily Russia, leading to what became known as the Cold War. On April 4, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed by the U.S., Canada, and several Western European nations, in Washington, D.C. The treaty established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which was designed to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.
The development of both nations as nuclear powers increased the Cold War tensions. In 1975, the Helsinki Final Act was signed by a multitude of countries, including the USSR and the US. It was not binding legal agreement or treaty, but it acknowledged recognition of the Soviet Union′s dominance in Eastern Europe and the Soviet annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In the 1970s and 1980s the USSR and the U.S. signed a series of arms control treaties such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972, two Strategic Arms Limitation treaties (SALT) and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987), and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in 1991.
In the late 1980s, a number of Eastern European nations took advantage of the reforms brought about under Mikhail Gorbachev. They began to break away from communist rule. The economic costs of the Cold War had made it difficult for the Russian government to bring these nations back into the fold. On December 3, 1989, Gorbachev and the U.S. President George H. W. Bush declared the Cold War over at the time.
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved, and the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose association of the former USSR's constituent republics was formed. The USSR's Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became an independent state that took over the USSR's UN Security Council permanent membership.
Relations between Russia and the U.S. remained cordial under Russia's president Boris Yeltsin and the President George H. W. Bush and then with the Clinton administrations in the 1990s. In 1993, the two countries signed the START II arms control treaty that was designed to ban the use of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The treaty was ratified by both countries, but was never implemented and was formally abandoned in 2002, aftr the US′s withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
At the end of the 1990s, relations took a turn for the worse following the first phase of the NATO eastward expansion. Russia opposed the U.S.-led NATO military operation against Serbia and Montenegro over Kosovo that began in late March 1999. In December 1999, while on a visit to China, president Boris Yeltsin criticized President Bill Clinton after Clinton was critical of Russia's tactics in Chechnya at the start of the Second Chechen War. Yeltsin reminded his audience that Russia remained a nuclear superpower.
Vladimir Putin, who assumed the Russian Presidency on December 31, 1999. Under Putin, Russia became more assertive in international affairs. Russian leadership blamed the US for encouraging anti-Russian revolts during the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. In 2002, the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to move forward with plans for a missile defense system. Putin was critical of the decision. Russia strongly opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but stopped short of exercising its veto in the United Nations Security Council. Putin considered the expansion of NATO into the old Eastern Bloc, and U.S. efforts to gain access to Central Asian oil and natural gas as a potentially hostile encroachment on Russia's sphere of influence.
In March 2007, the U.S. announced plans to build an anti-ballistic missile defense installation in Poland along with a radar station in the Czech Republic. Both nations were once Warsaw Pact members. U.S. officials claimed that the system was designed to protect the United States and Europe from possible nuclear missile attacks by Iran or North Korea. Russia saw the new system as a threat. In response, Russia tested a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile, the RS-24, which it claimed could defeat any defense system. On June 3, 2007, Putin warned that if the United States built the missile defense system, Russia would consider targeting missiles at Poland and the Czech Republic.
In October 2007, Vladimir Putin visited Iran to discuss Russia's aid to Iran's nuclear power program. President Bush criticized this action, stating, "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. " In response, Putin compared U.S. plans to put up a missile defense system near Russia's border as analogous to when the Soviet Union deployed missiles in Cuba, prompting the Cuban Missile Crisis. In February 2008, Putin threatened to retarget some of Russia's missiles towards the missile defense system. He also said that missiles might be redirected towards Ukraine if they went ahead with plans to build NATO bases within their territory. Putin said "We will be compelled to aim our missiles at facilities that we consider a threat to our national security." In July 2008, Russia announced that if a U.S. anti-missile shield was deployed near the Russian border, it would have to react militarily.
On August 14, 2008, the U.S. and Poland agreed to have 10 two-stage missile interceptors placed in Poland, as part of a missile shield to defend Europe and the U.S. from a possible missile attack by Iran. In return, the U.S. agreed to move a battery of MIM-104 Patriot missiles to Poland, staffed by U.S. Military personnel. The Czech Republic also agreed to allow the placement of a radar-tracking station in their country as part of the missile defense shield. After the agreement was announced, Russian officials said defences on Russia's borders would be increased.
In August 2008, United States-Russia bilateral relations became further strained, when Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war over the Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Later, in November 2008, after Barack Obama was elected president, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in his first annual address to the Federal Assembly of Russia announced plans to deploy Iskander short-range missiles to Kaliningrad, near the border with Poland, if the United States went ahead with its European Ballistic Missile Defense System. Medvedev and President Obama released a statement at the 2009 G20 summit in London that promised a "fresh start" in Russia–United States relations. The statement also called on Iran to abandon its nuclear program and to permit foreign inspectors into the country. In early July 2009, Obama visited Moscow where he met with Medvedev and prime minister Putin. Speaking at the New Economic School Obama said, "America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia. This belief is rooted in our respect for the Russian people, and a shared history between our nations that goes beyond competition."
In March 2010, the United States and Russia reached an agreement to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The new nuclear arms reduction treaty (called New START) was signed by President Obama and President Medvedev on April 8, 2010. The agreement called for a reduction in the number of long-range nuclear weapons held by each side to about 1,500, down from the current maximum of 2,200 set by the Moscow Treaty of 2002. The New START replaced the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December 2009.
Mass protests took place in Russia after the legislative election in early December 2011 of prime minister Vladimir Putin. Putin accused the United States of interference and inciting unrest. He accused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fomenting unrest in the country. By 2012, an atmosphere of mistrust continued. In 2012 Putin was once again elected President. In mid-September 2013, the United States and Russia reached agreement for the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. The Obama administration was criticized for having used the chemical weapons deal as an ineffective alternative to military action that Obama had promised in the event of use of chemical weapons by the Syrians. Obama personally thanked Putin for Russia's role in the agreement.
In July 2012, two Russian Tu-95 Bear aircraft were intercepted by NORAD fighters in the air defense zone off the U.S. coast of Alaska, where they were on maneuvers. On December 14, 2012, U.S. president Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which imposed travel and financial restrictions on designated human rights abusers in Russia. On December 28, 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a retaliatory bill that banned any United States citizen from adopting children from Russia. On February 12, 2013, hours before the 2013 State of the Union Address by U.S. President Obama, two Russian Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers, reportedly equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, circled the U.S. territory of Guam. Air Force F-15 jets based on Andersen Air Force Base were scrambled to intercept the aircraft.
In July 2014, the U.S. government accused Russia of having violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by testing a prohibited medium-range ground-launched cruise missile. In early June 2015, the State Department reported that Russia had failed to correct the violation of the I.N.F. Treaty.
In July of 2013, Russia granted political asylum to Edward Snowden, a contractor for the United States government, who copied and released hundreds of thousands of pages of secret U.S. government documents. He fled to Hong Kong, and then to Russia. Snowden was wanted on a criminal warrant by U.S. prosecutors for theft of government property and espionage. The granting of asylum aggravated relations between the two countries and led to the cancellation of a meeting between Obama and Putin that was scheduled for early September 2013 in Moscow. Snowden is believed to remain in Russia
Following the collapse of the Viktor Yanukovych government in Ukraine in February 2014, Russia annexed Crimea. It justified the action on the basis of a controversial referendum held on March 16, 2014. The U.S. had submitted a UN Security Council resolution declaring the referendum illegal, but the resolution was vetoed by Russia. U.S. secretary of state John Kerry said, "This is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of its pretext." On March 24, 2014, the U.S. and its allies in the G8 political forum suspended Russia's membership. President Obama ruled out any Western military intervention in Ukraine and said that Russia's annexation of Crimea would be hard to reverse.
As unrest spread into eastern Ukraine in the spring of 2014, relations between the U.S. and Russia worsened. The U.S. government imposed punitive sanctions for Russia's activity in Ukraine, targeting Russia's major energy, financial and defence companies. From March 2014 to 2016, six rounds of sanctions were imposed by the US, as well as by the EU. The first three rounds targeted individuals close to Putin by freezing their assets and denying leave to enter. Russia responded by banning import of certain food products as well as by banning entry for certain government officials from the countries that imposed sanctions against Russia. The passage of the Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014 prohibited Russian state firms from accessing Western financing and technology and provided $350 million in arms and military equipment to Ukraine.
On September 30, 2015, Russia began an air campaign in Syria on the side of the Syrian government headed by president Bashar al-Assad of Syria. President Obama called the military campaign a "recipe for disaster". U.S. military officials ruled out military cooperation with Russia in Syria. Russia's campaign was seen as propping up Assad, whom Obama had repeatedly called upon to leave power. Three weeks into the Russian campaign in Syria, on October 20, 2015, Putin met with Assad in Moscow to discuss their joint military campaign and a future political settlement in Syria. The meeting provoked a sharp condemnation from the White House.
Syrian peace talks were held in Vienna in October and November 2015, with Iran participating. Bilateral negotiations over Syria were unilaterally suspended by the U.S on October 3, 2016, in response to a renewed offensive on Aleppo by Syrian and Russian troops. On the same day Putin signed a decree suspending the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement with the U.S. Putin complained about the failure by the U.S. to comply with the agreement.
The U.S. presidential election campaign of 2016 led to accusations of the Russian government of being behind massive cyber-hackings and leaks that aimed at influencing the election. The accusations were dismissed by Putin. He said the idea that Russia was favoring Donald Trump was a myth created by the Clinton campaign. The FBI investigated alleged connections between Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort. In mid-November 2016, shortly after the election of Donald Trump, the Kremlin accused president Barack Obama's administration of trying to damage the U.S.' relationship with Russia in order to prevent good relations with the incoming administration of Donald Trump. In an address to the Russian parliament delivered on December 1, 2016, Putin said, "We are prepared to cooperate with the new American administration. It's important to normalize and begin to develop bilateral relations on an equal and mutually beneficial basis. Mutual efforts by Russia and the United States in solving global and regional problems are in the interest of the entire world."
In early December 2016, the White House said that President Obama had ordered the intelligence agencies to review evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. President-elect Donald Trump called the CIA accusation that Russia was behind the hackers' efforts to sway the campaign in his favor "ridiculous". In mid-December 2016, Hillary Clinton suggested that Putin had a personal grudge against her due to her criticism of the 2011 Russian legislative election and his opinion that she was responsible for fomenting the anti-Putin protests in Russia that began in December 2011. She partially attributed her loss in the 2016 election to Russian meddling organized by Putin.
A week after the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, 2017, the new President had a 50-minute telephone conversation with Putin in which the presidents agreed to arrange a face-to-face meeting.
The Russians condemned the cruise-missile strikes on the Syrian Shayrat Airbase, conducted by the U.S. on April 7 2017 in response to the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. The Russian government called this an "act of aggression" based on a "trumped-up pretext", and said that this would substantially impair Russia–United States relations. Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev said the attack had placed the U.S. on the cusp of warfare with Russia. In early June, Vladimir Putin said relations were at an all-time low since the end of the Cold War. In April 2017, Trump's administration denied a request from ExxonMobil to allow it to resume oil drilling in Russia. In July 2017, ExxonMobil filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government challenging the finding that the company violated sanctions imposed on Russia.
On July 6, 2017, during a speech in Warsaw, Poland, Trump urged Russia to cease its support for "hostile regimes" in Syria and Iran. The following day, Trump met with Putin at the G20 Hamburg summit in Germany. The two got together again in November 2017 at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Danang, although they had no formal meeting.
On March 1, 2018, Putin announced missile technology breakthroughs made by Russia. These were seen by Trump administration officials as false reports. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis claimed that the systems Putin had talked about "are still years away" and he did not see them changing the military balance. The remarks fueled US antagonism against Russia. On March 26, 2018, President Trump ordered the expulsion of sixty Russian diplomats and the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle. This was followed by the expulsion of a total of 140 Russian diplomats by 25 countries.
In April 2018, US missile strikes were launched against Syrian government targets following the suspected chemical attack in Douma on April 7. Russia′s top military officials threatening to hit U.S. military targets in the event of a massive U.S.-led strike against Syria. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said that direct military conflict between the Russian forces and the U.S. forces in Syria had been averted in April "by the wisdom of the Russian leadership". He claimed that the US-led missile attack against Syria would have been far more extensive had it not been for Russia′s intervention.
On June 8, 2018, Trump appeared to be retreating from his tough stance against Russia when he called for Russia to be readmitted to the G-7. He met with Putin in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, and was criticized for appearing to have sided with Putin on the issue of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, criticizing findings of the United States Intelligence Community. Republican Senator John McCain called the press conference "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory."
It is unclear what direction US-Russian relations will take going forward. The perplexing problem on the president's desk is how to meaningfully condemn and end Russian support for the oppressive Assad regime, while managing the military balance between the two nations and preventing further arms build-up. It's a long way away from the issues that John Quincy Adams had to contend with.
During the Civil War Russia supported the Union against the Confederacy, and its support was a factor which deterred the British from intervening. Russia sold its territory in North America, Alaska, to the United States in 1867. In 1905 Russia and Japan turned to US President Theodore Roosevelt to negotiate a peace that resulted in the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War.
From 1820 until 1917, over 3 million immigrants arrived in the U.S. from Russia Empire. Most were Jews or Poles. The relationship between the two countries changed with the Russian Revolution as the U.S. was one of the nations which participated in the allied military intervention against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. The US refused to formally recognize the Soviet government and did not re-establish diplomatic relations until November of 1933. The United States and the Soviet Union, along with Great Britain, formed the Big Three major Allies against the Axis powers during World War II.
When the war ended, tensions arose between those allied nations with democratic governments and those with communist governments, primarily Russia, leading to what became known as the Cold War. On April 4, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed by the U.S., Canada, and several Western European nations, in Washington, D.C. The treaty established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which was designed to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.
The development of both nations as nuclear powers increased the Cold War tensions. In 1975, the Helsinki Final Act was signed by a multitude of countries, including the USSR and the US. It was not binding legal agreement or treaty, but it acknowledged recognition of the Soviet Union′s dominance in Eastern Europe and the Soviet annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In the 1970s and 1980s the USSR and the U.S. signed a series of arms control treaties such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972, two Strategic Arms Limitation treaties (SALT) and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987), and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in 1991.
In the late 1980s, a number of Eastern European nations took advantage of the reforms brought about under Mikhail Gorbachev. They began to break away from communist rule. The economic costs of the Cold War had made it difficult for the Russian government to bring these nations back into the fold. On December 3, 1989, Gorbachev and the U.S. President George H. W. Bush declared the Cold War over at the time.
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved, and the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose association of the former USSR's constituent republics was formed. The USSR's Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became an independent state that took over the USSR's UN Security Council permanent membership.
Relations between Russia and the U.S. remained cordial under Russia's president Boris Yeltsin and the President George H. W. Bush and then with the Clinton administrations in the 1990s. In 1993, the two countries signed the START II arms control treaty that was designed to ban the use of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The treaty was ratified by both countries, but was never implemented and was formally abandoned in 2002, aftr the US′s withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
At the end of the 1990s, relations took a turn for the worse following the first phase of the NATO eastward expansion. Russia opposed the U.S.-led NATO military operation against Serbia and Montenegro over Kosovo that began in late March 1999. In December 1999, while on a visit to China, president Boris Yeltsin criticized President Bill Clinton after Clinton was critical of Russia's tactics in Chechnya at the start of the Second Chechen War. Yeltsin reminded his audience that Russia remained a nuclear superpower.
Vladimir Putin, who assumed the Russian Presidency on December 31, 1999. Under Putin, Russia became more assertive in international affairs. Russian leadership blamed the US for encouraging anti-Russian revolts during the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. In 2002, the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to move forward with plans for a missile defense system. Putin was critical of the decision. Russia strongly opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but stopped short of exercising its veto in the United Nations Security Council. Putin considered the expansion of NATO into the old Eastern Bloc, and U.S. efforts to gain access to Central Asian oil and natural gas as a potentially hostile encroachment on Russia's sphere of influence.
In March 2007, the U.S. announced plans to build an anti-ballistic missile defense installation in Poland along with a radar station in the Czech Republic. Both nations were once Warsaw Pact members. U.S. officials claimed that the system was designed to protect the United States and Europe from possible nuclear missile attacks by Iran or North Korea. Russia saw the new system as a threat. In response, Russia tested a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile, the RS-24, which it claimed could defeat any defense system. On June 3, 2007, Putin warned that if the United States built the missile defense system, Russia would consider targeting missiles at Poland and the Czech Republic.
In October 2007, Vladimir Putin visited Iran to discuss Russia's aid to Iran's nuclear power program. President Bush criticized this action, stating, "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. " In response, Putin compared U.S. plans to put up a missile defense system near Russia's border as analogous to when the Soviet Union deployed missiles in Cuba, prompting the Cuban Missile Crisis. In February 2008, Putin threatened to retarget some of Russia's missiles towards the missile defense system. He also said that missiles might be redirected towards Ukraine if they went ahead with plans to build NATO bases within their territory. Putin said "We will be compelled to aim our missiles at facilities that we consider a threat to our national security." In July 2008, Russia announced that if a U.S. anti-missile shield was deployed near the Russian border, it would have to react militarily.
On August 14, 2008, the U.S. and Poland agreed to have 10 two-stage missile interceptors placed in Poland, as part of a missile shield to defend Europe and the U.S. from a possible missile attack by Iran. In return, the U.S. agreed to move a battery of MIM-104 Patriot missiles to Poland, staffed by U.S. Military personnel. The Czech Republic also agreed to allow the placement of a radar-tracking station in their country as part of the missile defense shield. After the agreement was announced, Russian officials said defences on Russia's borders would be increased.
In August 2008, United States-Russia bilateral relations became further strained, when Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war over the Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Later, in November 2008, after Barack Obama was elected president, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in his first annual address to the Federal Assembly of Russia announced plans to deploy Iskander short-range missiles to Kaliningrad, near the border with Poland, if the United States went ahead with its European Ballistic Missile Defense System. Medvedev and President Obama released a statement at the 2009 G20 summit in London that promised a "fresh start" in Russia–United States relations. The statement also called on Iran to abandon its nuclear program and to permit foreign inspectors into the country. In early July 2009, Obama visited Moscow where he met with Medvedev and prime minister Putin. Speaking at the New Economic School Obama said, "America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia. This belief is rooted in our respect for the Russian people, and a shared history between our nations that goes beyond competition."
In March 2010, the United States and Russia reached an agreement to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The new nuclear arms reduction treaty (called New START) was signed by President Obama and President Medvedev on April 8, 2010. The agreement called for a reduction in the number of long-range nuclear weapons held by each side to about 1,500, down from the current maximum of 2,200 set by the Moscow Treaty of 2002. The New START replaced the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December 2009.
Mass protests took place in Russia after the legislative election in early December 2011 of prime minister Vladimir Putin. Putin accused the United States of interference and inciting unrest. He accused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fomenting unrest in the country. By 2012, an atmosphere of mistrust continued. In 2012 Putin was once again elected President. In mid-September 2013, the United States and Russia reached agreement for the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. The Obama administration was criticized for having used the chemical weapons deal as an ineffective alternative to military action that Obama had promised in the event of use of chemical weapons by the Syrians. Obama personally thanked Putin for Russia's role in the agreement.
In July 2012, two Russian Tu-95 Bear aircraft were intercepted by NORAD fighters in the air defense zone off the U.S. coast of Alaska, where they were on maneuvers. On December 14, 2012, U.S. president Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which imposed travel and financial restrictions on designated human rights abusers in Russia. On December 28, 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a retaliatory bill that banned any United States citizen from adopting children from Russia. On February 12, 2013, hours before the 2013 State of the Union Address by U.S. President Obama, two Russian Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers, reportedly equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, circled the U.S. territory of Guam. Air Force F-15 jets based on Andersen Air Force Base were scrambled to intercept the aircraft.
In July 2014, the U.S. government accused Russia of having violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by testing a prohibited medium-range ground-launched cruise missile. In early June 2015, the State Department reported that Russia had failed to correct the violation of the I.N.F. Treaty.
In July of 2013, Russia granted political asylum to Edward Snowden, a contractor for the United States government, who copied and released hundreds of thousands of pages of secret U.S. government documents. He fled to Hong Kong, and then to Russia. Snowden was wanted on a criminal warrant by U.S. prosecutors for theft of government property and espionage. The granting of asylum aggravated relations between the two countries and led to the cancellation of a meeting between Obama and Putin that was scheduled for early September 2013 in Moscow. Snowden is believed to remain in Russia
Following the collapse of the Viktor Yanukovych government in Ukraine in February 2014, Russia annexed Crimea. It justified the action on the basis of a controversial referendum held on March 16, 2014. The U.S. had submitted a UN Security Council resolution declaring the referendum illegal, but the resolution was vetoed by Russia. U.S. secretary of state John Kerry said, "This is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of its pretext." On March 24, 2014, the U.S. and its allies in the G8 political forum suspended Russia's membership. President Obama ruled out any Western military intervention in Ukraine and said that Russia's annexation of Crimea would be hard to reverse.
As unrest spread into eastern Ukraine in the spring of 2014, relations between the U.S. and Russia worsened. The U.S. government imposed punitive sanctions for Russia's activity in Ukraine, targeting Russia's major energy, financial and defence companies. From March 2014 to 2016, six rounds of sanctions were imposed by the US, as well as by the EU. The first three rounds targeted individuals close to Putin by freezing their assets and denying leave to enter. Russia responded by banning import of certain food products as well as by banning entry for certain government officials from the countries that imposed sanctions against Russia. The passage of the Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014 prohibited Russian state firms from accessing Western financing and technology and provided $350 million in arms and military equipment to Ukraine.
On September 30, 2015, Russia began an air campaign in Syria on the side of the Syrian government headed by president Bashar al-Assad of Syria. President Obama called the military campaign a "recipe for disaster". U.S. military officials ruled out military cooperation with Russia in Syria. Russia's campaign was seen as propping up Assad, whom Obama had repeatedly called upon to leave power. Three weeks into the Russian campaign in Syria, on October 20, 2015, Putin met with Assad in Moscow to discuss their joint military campaign and a future political settlement in Syria. The meeting provoked a sharp condemnation from the White House.
Syrian peace talks were held in Vienna in October and November 2015, with Iran participating. Bilateral negotiations over Syria were unilaterally suspended by the U.S on October 3, 2016, in response to a renewed offensive on Aleppo by Syrian and Russian troops. On the same day Putin signed a decree suspending the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement with the U.S. Putin complained about the failure by the U.S. to comply with the agreement.
The U.S. presidential election campaign of 2016 led to accusations of the Russian government of being behind massive cyber-hackings and leaks that aimed at influencing the election. The accusations were dismissed by Putin. He said the idea that Russia was favoring Donald Trump was a myth created by the Clinton campaign. The FBI investigated alleged connections between Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort. In mid-November 2016, shortly after the election of Donald Trump, the Kremlin accused president Barack Obama's administration of trying to damage the U.S.' relationship with Russia in order to prevent good relations with the incoming administration of Donald Trump. In an address to the Russian parliament delivered on December 1, 2016, Putin said, "We are prepared to cooperate with the new American administration. It's important to normalize and begin to develop bilateral relations on an equal and mutually beneficial basis. Mutual efforts by Russia and the United States in solving global and regional problems are in the interest of the entire world."
In early December 2016, the White House said that President Obama had ordered the intelligence agencies to review evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. President-elect Donald Trump called the CIA accusation that Russia was behind the hackers' efforts to sway the campaign in his favor "ridiculous". In mid-December 2016, Hillary Clinton suggested that Putin had a personal grudge against her due to her criticism of the 2011 Russian legislative election and his opinion that she was responsible for fomenting the anti-Putin protests in Russia that began in December 2011. She partially attributed her loss in the 2016 election to Russian meddling organized by Putin.
A week after the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, 2017, the new President had a 50-minute telephone conversation with Putin in which the presidents agreed to arrange a face-to-face meeting.
The Russians condemned the cruise-missile strikes on the Syrian Shayrat Airbase, conducted by the U.S. on April 7 2017 in response to the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. The Russian government called this an "act of aggression" based on a "trumped-up pretext", and said that this would substantially impair Russia–United States relations. Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev said the attack had placed the U.S. on the cusp of warfare with Russia. In early June, Vladimir Putin said relations were at an all-time low since the end of the Cold War. In April 2017, Trump's administration denied a request from ExxonMobil to allow it to resume oil drilling in Russia. In July 2017, ExxonMobil filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government challenging the finding that the company violated sanctions imposed on Russia.
On July 6, 2017, during a speech in Warsaw, Poland, Trump urged Russia to cease its support for "hostile regimes" in Syria and Iran. The following day, Trump met with Putin at the G20 Hamburg summit in Germany. The two got together again in November 2017 at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Danang, although they had no formal meeting.
On March 1, 2018, Putin announced missile technology breakthroughs made by Russia. These were seen by Trump administration officials as false reports. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis claimed that the systems Putin had talked about "are still years away" and he did not see them changing the military balance. The remarks fueled US antagonism against Russia. On March 26, 2018, President Trump ordered the expulsion of sixty Russian diplomats and the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle. This was followed by the expulsion of a total of 140 Russian diplomats by 25 countries.
In April 2018, US missile strikes were launched against Syrian government targets following the suspected chemical attack in Douma on April 7. Russia′s top military officials threatening to hit U.S. military targets in the event of a massive U.S.-led strike against Syria. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said that direct military conflict between the Russian forces and the U.S. forces in Syria had been averted in April "by the wisdom of the Russian leadership". He claimed that the US-led missile attack against Syria would have been far more extensive had it not been for Russia′s intervention.
On June 8, 2018, Trump appeared to be retreating from his tough stance against Russia when he called for Russia to be readmitted to the G-7. He met with Putin in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, and was criticized for appearing to have sided with Putin on the issue of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, criticizing findings of the United States Intelligence Community. Republican Senator John McCain called the press conference "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory."
It is unclear what direction US-Russian relations will take going forward. The perplexing problem on the president's desk is how to meaningfully condemn and end Russian support for the oppressive Assad regime, while managing the military balance between the two nations and preventing further arms build-up. It's a long way away from the issues that John Quincy Adams had to contend with.