The White House closed off US press to Sergey Lavrov meeting, leaving Russian press to cover it and Lavrov to dismiss accusations of collusion as ‘fake news’

Sergey Lavrov came to Washington on Wednesday after an absence of four years, and was absolutely shocked – shocked! – to hear that Russia had been accused of meddling in US internal affairs.

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There also seemed to have been some fuss about the FBI director James Comey’s abrupt dismissal the night before, in the midst of a multi-pronged investigation into Russian interference.

“Was he fired? You’re kidding! You’re kidding!” the Russian foreign minister exclaimed when a journalist asked him whether Comey’s downfall might throw a shadow over the Russian’s visit. The surprise was archly theatrical, of course, delivered with the knowing smirk of Captain Renault expressing astonishment at gambling going on in the casino in Casablanca.

While Lavrov toyed with the press, his host, Rex Tillerson, stood by, smiling, silent and upstaged outside his seventh-floor office before giving the press a little wave and walking away with the Russian for a closed-door meeting, then taking him to see Donald Trump at the White House.

Later that morning, Lavrov would shrug off the political crisis surrounding the Trump campaign’s contacts with the Russian government during the election, and the US intelligence community’s conclusion that Moscow had sought to skew the vote in Trump’s favour, as mere “fake news” that humiliated the US.

In Washington, however, the scandal has cost the jobs of the national security adviser Michael Flynn as well as Comey, and there are multiple inquiries under way by the FBI and in Congress. Lavrov’s visit did nothing to dispel suspicions that there is a lot yet to be discovered about Trump’s true relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia’s oligarchs.

The morning after the president made history and broke US political norms by firing his FBI director, the meeting with Lavrov was the only event in Trump’s official schedule (though he later had an unannounced visit from Richard Nixon’s secretary of state Henry Kissinger, as if the echoes of Watergate were not loud enough).

The White House closed off press access to the Oval Office meeting with Lavrov, not even allowing photographers in. So it was left to the Russian state press to put out pictures of Trump and Lavrov shaking hands and beaming. They were joined by a jubilant Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to Washington and the “typhoid Mary” of the Russian affair.

A string of Trump aides have got themselves into trouble through undisclosed contacts with Kislyak – most importantly Flynn, who no longer has a job in the White House because of them. Since Tuesday night, the man in charge of investigating those contacts is also out of a job, and the future of the Russia investigation is very much in question.

Against that backdrop, the pictures sent out by the Russian press of Lavrov and Kislyak grinning in the White House were striking.

The White House and the state department put out terse statements on the day’s discussions, and the state department gave no briefing, leaving it once more to the Russians to frame the presentation.

At a press conference in the Russian embassy, Lavrov praised Trump and Tillerson, repeatedly calling them “businesslike” and comparing them favourably to the Obama administration and what he called its “dirty tricks”. He portrayed the Kremlin and the Trump administration as working together to clear up the mess left behind, a reference in part to the continuing US sanctions on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine and its role in the US presidential election.

“We discussed our bilateral relations which are not very encouraging. The reason is well known. Unfortunately the previous administration bent over backwards to undermine the solid foundation of those relations,” Lavrov said. “President Trump clearly states his interest to build businesslike pragmatic relations with Russia and to settle outstanding issues.

“Our dialogue right now is free from the ideology that was very typical for Obama’s administration,” Lavrov went on. “Both Trump and the secretary of state in the administration – as I realised today once again – are businesslike people and they want to reach agreements, not for the sake of demonstrating the achievements to anyone in terms of their ideological preferences.”

As for the uproar about the Trump team’s relationship with Moscow, Lavrov projected his own deadpan brand of bemusement at the very idea of Putin as puppeteer.

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“Regarding this noise about our contacts, that fake information by which we are allegedly in control of the domestic policy of the US – yes, it [has become] the normal background for our relations,” he said. “It must be humiliating for the American people to realise that the Russian federation is controlling the situation in America. How is it possible for such a great power and such a great country?”

It was instead, he said, those pushing for an independent investigation who were undermining the country.

“I believe that it is politicians who are damaging the political system of the US trying to pretend that someone is trying to controlling America from the outside,” Lavrov said.