The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

That afternoon, Huntsman and I placed a wreath on a bridge near the Kremlin, less than a hundred yards from St. Basil’s Cathedral, where Boris Nemtsov had been murdered, many believed by Kremlin operatives. We then placed a wreath at Russia’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, along the Kremlin wall, a ceremony I had first attended with Donald Rumsfeld almost exactly eighteen years earlier. My meeting with Putin followed right afterward, beginning precisely the same as the prior meeting, same ornately decorated room, same arrangements, same conference table. Putin was obviously determined to make the point while the media was present that he was unhappy the US had withdrawn from the INF Treaty. He noted that the eagle in the Great Seal of the United States is clutching olive branches in one talon (although he failed to note the eagle is clutching arrows in the other) and asked if the eagle had eaten all the olives. I said I hadn’t brought any new olives with me. So much for Soviet-style banter. Once the press exited, Putin said he had received reports on my earlier meetings and that their side valued our contacts a lot, and that it was always a pleasure to meet with me. We discussed our respective positions on the INF at length, but what really interested Putin was “What comes next?,” meaning what were we contemplating regarding deployment in Europe? Having made the point earlier that Russia and America were effectively the only two countries bound by the INF, I replied that I t...