UPDATE 2 - Trump Calling Off Meeting With Putin May Hamper Bilateral Ties - Russian Lawmaker

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th November, 2018) Russian-US relations may suffer due to the decision of US President Donald Trump to cancel the meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit, Andrei Klimov, the deputy chair of the Russian upper house International Affairs Committee, told Sputnik on Thursday.

Trump wrote on Twitter earlier in the day that he had decided to cancel the meeting with Putin in Buenos Aires after reading the report on the incident in the Kerch Strait, in which Ukrainian Navy ships were detained by Russian border guards for illegally crossing the Russian border.

"This, of course, will not improve our bilateral relations. At the meeting between Putin and Trump, such important issues as INF [the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty] and New START [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] should have been discussed. Now this will not happen," Klimov said.

The US president has been forced by the opposition to cancel the meeting with the Russian leader, the lawmaker underlined.

"Mr. Trump is afraid of his domestic opposition, which is clearly Russophobic in nature. The situation in the Kerch Strait is just an excuse - he does not know what to do with this Russophobic opposition, and feels that it is stronger than him," Klimov said.

At the same time, First Deputy Chair of the Russian Upper House International Affairs Committee Vladimir Dzhabarov told Sputnik that Trump's decision to cancel the meeting was an attempt to blackmail Moscow.

"I do not rule out that the meeting can still take place. Trump's opinion still may change again as before, when it had been changing three times a day," Dzhabarov noted.

In turn, member of the Russian lower house's committee on Security and Countering Corruption Adalbi Shkhagoshev told Sputnik that Trump could change his decision later.

"I am sure that this decision is not final. Because there's a lot to discuss besides this [Kerch Strait incident]," Shkhagoshev said.

Meanwhile, the chair of the Russian Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, wrote on Facebook that Trump's decision to cancel the meeting with Putin could have been expected "from the very moment when the US leader made it dependent on the examining of the Kerch Strait incident."

Similarly, deputy chair of the Russian lower house's International Affairs Committee Anatoly Karpov told Sputnik that the cancellation of the meeting was the continuation of the US policy of "looking for an enemy in the image of Russia."

According to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), Ukraine's Berdyansk and Nikopol gunboats and the Yany Kapu tugboat on Sunday sailed toward the Kerch Strait, the only entrance to the Sea of Azov, where the ships were seized by Russia after failing to respond to lawful demands to stop. The FSB also said that these provocations were coordinated by two Ukrainian Security Service officers who were on the vessels.

In response to the situation in the Kerch Strait, the Ukrainian authorities have introduced martial law in select regions of Ukraine along the border with Russia as well as the coasts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov for 30 days.