U.S. President Donald Trump, right, and Russia's President Vladimir Putin are set to meet in the coming weeks. | Kremlin Pool Photo via AP Trump to warn Putin against midterm interference, Pompeo says

President Donald Trump is sure to warn President Vladimir Putin of Russia that it is “completely unacceptable” to interfere in U.S. elections if the two men meet in the coming weeks, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday.

Pompeo’s comments came as Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, met with Russian officials in Moscow to work out a plan for a summit between the two leaders. They also followed warnings by experts that Russia would try to interfere, through disinformation campaigns and other means, in the November midterm elections.


“I’m confident that when the president meets with Vladimir Putin he will make clear that meddling in our elections is completely unacceptable,” Pompeo said during a Senate subcommittee hearing that covered a range of foreign policy challenges.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a bid to help Trump capture the White House. The Republican president has dismissed those suspicions, but he has also repeatedly spoken favorably of Putin and Russia.

The upcoming summit is likely to take place sometime in July, possibly around the same time Trump meets with America’s allies in NATO. Trump has expressed hostility toward the military alliance, saying its members rely too heavily on U.S. funding.

Leaders of NATO countries worry that Trump will engage in verbal warfare with them, dashing their hopes to keep up a united front against Russia, while lavishing kind words on Putin when the two meet. If that happens, it will echo how Trump treated allies at the recent G-7 summit in Canada, which was held just before he sat down and praised the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un.

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During Wednesday’s hearing, Pompeo also acknowledged that, despite an agreement reached between Trump and Kim in Singapore, the North had yet to turn over any physical remains of U.S. troops killed during the Korean War.

He insisted, however, that getting the remains back remained a high priority for the administration. There are thousands of American troops whose remains are believed to be in North Korea.

Pompeo declined to detail ongoing conversations with the North about its pledge to denuclearize — the primary focus of the Trump-Kim summit. Offering up details could be “counterproductive” to the process, Pompeo said.

The North Koreans are “watching this hearing,” he noted.

He assured senators, however, that there were a range of U.S. officials across several agencies hammering out the details of future nuclear negotiations with Pyongyang, and that he was leading the effort.

Pompeo also said the U.S. continued to enforce sanctions on North Korea and expected other countries to do the same. He admitted, however, that in the case of Chinese enforcement, there’s been a “modest amount” of backsliding.