Trump’s Russia strategy collides with foreign policy reality in leaked call with Putin – WBNews

© Alexei Nikolsky/AP Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a Security Council meeting in Moscow on Feb. 9, 2017. MOSCOW — President Trump’s heady campaign rhetoric about possible detente with Russia is coming face to face with the realities of his chaotic new administration. Details emerged Thursday about a telephone call between Trump and Russian President Vladi­mir Putin in which Trump blasted a treaty negotiated under the Obama administration that limits nuclear weapons deployments — after Trump reportedly paused the call with Putin to ask an aide about the treaty. According to a report by the Reuters news agency, Trump then denounced the New START treaty as favoring Russia. The Kremlin refused to comment Friday on the leaked details of the telephone call. “I couldn’t confirm this,” Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, said in a phone call with journalists. “We’ve already reported everything that we considered necessary about the results of the telephone conversation. We have nothing to add.” White House press secretary Sean Spicer earlier challenged the report in remarks to The Washington Post, saying that Trump knew what the treaty was but was merely asking an aide for advice. Russia is enthusiastic about Trump’s rhetoric about bettering relations and his re-examination of American exceptionalism, a philosophy that Putin has blasted as dangerous. But the more concrete (and still unclear) elements of Trump’s foreign policy, including new negotiations on arms control, are non-starters in Moscow, analysts say. And there is concern that Trump’s mercurial style will not be to…more detail