butina who pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to influence u.s.-russia relations. she s been held for five months and russia is not happy. what this looks like, at least, is the russians simply doing tit for tat. what they ll do in response and other countries have done in response is just arbitrarily pick up someone who isn t responsible or guilty of anything just to create pressure and leverage on us. reporter: so, russia isn t saying what they allege they have on whelan, and the state department isn t saying whether russia s being forthcoming with information. what we do know is what we hear from our analysts here, even based on what we know about whelan now, they re saying they feel it s highly unlikely he would be involved in the u.s. intelligence community. first of all, because of his dishonorable discharge from the military but also they say this is just not the way a u.s. espionage operation would work, that they wouldn t just send somebody over there as a sort of con
which plug in to extend the wifi even farther, past anything that stands in its way. .well almost anything. leave no room behind with xfi pods. simple. easy. awesome. click or visit a retail store today. new tonight, u.s. ambassador to russia, john huntsman, visiting the retired marine arrested in moscow on allegations of spying. it s a stunning move for the highest-ranking american in russia to be the first to visit an alleged spy, elevating the case of paul whelan big time tonight. whelan s family says he was arrested in moscow while attending a wedding just a few days ago. michelle kozinski is outfront. reporter: an american citizen is in custody in russia tonight, accused of spying, and only
back with general special coverage from helsinki. i m wolf blitzer reporting. tomorrow, the historic meeting between president putin. the summit comes days after the u.s. justice department indicted a dozen high-ranking military intelligence officers for their cyberattack on the 2016 presidential election in the united states, the russians are accused of hacking the democratic national committee, the democratic congressional campaign committee, the clinton campaign, e-mails across the board. let s talk all about this with our specialist and our analyst michelle kozinski who s joining us. david gergin is with us. phil mudd. and the former fbi intelligence adviser as well. give us some historic context,
they still could be wins for putin. that s what u.s. allies are worried about. they think there are real risks to having meeting. and privately, trump is saying he already knows what putin is going to say about meddling in the u.s. election. he doesn t see the point to bringing it up. they feel like he sees that as an impediment to getting whatever wins he thinks he can get out. on the eve of the summit, pretty extraordinary. the president of the european council, put it up on the screen once again, he tweets america and the eu are best friends, whoever says we are foes is spreading fake news. it s pretty extraordinary to hear the head of the eu, the european consul utter a statement like that, really going after the president of the united states on the eve of a meeting with the russian leader. guys, stick around, there s more we re going to be talking about. michelle kosinski, david gergen, a good conversation indeed. we ll have more from helsinki.
very low expect atioations, butt happened. they made a deal to eliminate all nuclear weapons on both sides. but reagan really wanted his star wars strategic defense initiative, gorbachev insisted as part of the deal he had to get rid of the whole idea. reagan balked and said i won t do it, and it ended with no deal at all. but it laid the foundation for conversations that continued after that, for something called the inf. the missile defense system or treaty that came out of that, which we still have today. it s a contentious issue. we re probably going to have conversations tomorrow between trump and putin about inf. but it was very successful. it was a significant, historic moment. you know, michelle, it was pretty surprising today, some would say shocking when the president was asked about the