Washington publicly denied the visit. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in June that he was unaware of an American delegation at the forum.
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Met with Kremlin officials
Before the trip, R.M. Cook was issued a diplomatic passport and given detailed briefings. The arrival of R.M. Cook as the first official US representative in several years at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was mentioned by Russian President’s aide Yuri Ushakov during the forum.
R.M. Cook, head of the US Commission of Fine Arts, arrived at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June. He was granted diplomatic protection there, and besides public events, he held negotiations with Russian officials. Among his interlocutors was Vladimir Putin’s advisor Anton Kobiakov, responsible at the Kremlin, among other things, for organizing the St. Petersburg forum.
As FT writes, the US administration hoped that unusual intermediaries like R.M. Cook could help move the stalled Russia-US relations forward.
Talked about his “dacha”
R.M. Cook himself presented the trip primarily as a “cultural visit.” At one of the forum sessions, he showed Russian participants photos of his house in Atlanta, which he called a “dacha” and which, he claimed, was built according to Russian wooden architecture traditions. R.M. Cook also spoke about Russian churches, public buildings, and estates whose restoration he participated in after his first trips to Russia in the 1990s.
R.M. Cook told FT that he has long known representatives of Russian cultural institutions. According to him, at one of the meetings there were many of his “old friends” among the participants, including people subject to US sanctions. Together with former Putin advisor on cultural issues Vladimir Tolstoy, he also visited the grave of the daughter of the first American envoy to Russia, John Quincy Adams.
During a speech at the forum’s plenary session alongside Putin, R.M. Cook conveyed “heartfelt greetings from your friend President Trump” and stated that there are “many ideas” between Moscow and Washington that need to be discussed. In response, Putin asked to pass a hockey puck to D. Trump. R.M. Cook later placed it on the “Resolute” desk in the Oval Office, which, he said, amused the US president.
R.M. Cook refused to answer FT whether D. Trump personally instructed him to establish contacts with the Kremlin and whether he intends to travel to Russia again. “There are many requests. We are working on it now,” he said. The White House told the newspaper that the US continues talks with both sides to stop the war, and Trump himself remains optimistic about the possibility of reaching a peace agreement.
One of the ideas that R.M. Cook said he discussed in Russia was using cultural events as an opportunity to cease fire. He proposed using music to achieve a truce and then move on to a peace agreement.
Washington denied
On June 2, TASS reported that D. Trump sent R.M. Cook to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. Ushakov then said that “this year, for the first time in several years, an official American delegation led by Rodney Cook, head of the US Commission of Fine Arts, will attend the forum.” In 2019, the US boycotted the forum after American investor Michael Calvey was arrested in Russia, and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, American officials did not attend the forum, reports the “Agentstvo” portal.
Washington publicly denied the visit. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in June that he was unaware of an American delegation at the forum.
However, R.M. Cook himself told The New Yorker that his trip was part of “soft diplomacy”: “The state encouraged me to go. Everything was planned specifically for me.”
R.M. Cook’s visit, which was publicly presented as cultural, actually turned out to be part of Washington’s efforts to restore direct communication channels with the Kremlin.
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