Lavrov Says No State Secrets Leaked During 2017 Trump Meeting

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th September, 2019) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, regarding alleged US informant reports, that no secrets were leaked at the top diplomat's 2017 meeting with US President Donald Trump.

According to the CNN broadcaster, the United States decided to extract its informant in Russia in 2017, soon after a meeting between Lavrov and Trump, where then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak was also present. Some media then reported that the person in question may have been Oleg Smolenkov. Sputnik has not been able to obtain an official confirmation that Smolenkov is the person described in these media reports.

"I can comment only on facts � regarding my meeting with president Trump in May 2017 in the White House, it was a visit, a reciprocal visit as then-State Secretary Rex Tillerson was in Moscow some two months earlier, spoke to me, was received by [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin, so I was in Washington in May 2017, and after the talks at the State Department we went to the White House, where we had a long conversation with president Trump," Lavrov said.

"Nobody revealed any state secrets during that conversation or even non-state ones. This, by the way, was confirmed by then-National Security Advisor Herbert McMaster, who was present at the meeting. Other people who are at least a little familiar with what was discussed then can also confirm this," the minister said.

The Kremlin said that Smolenkov had worked in the presidential administration but was fired several years ago.