MOSCOW: A meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin will take place at this week’s G20 summit as planned, the Kremlin said Thursday, despite US threats to cancel over Moscow’s tensions with Ukraine.
“Washington has confirmed the meeting,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
Peskov said the meeting in Argentina would start around noon on Saturday with “brief talks between the leaders” followed by broader Russia-US talks that could last around an hour.
Peskov stressed the need for open communication between the leaders, even if they are unlikely to agree on all the issues.
“We need to think about how to start talking about the topics of bilateral relations, the topics of strategic security and disarmament and regional conflicts,” Peskov said.
“We don’t have to agree on all the issues and indeed that may be impossible but we need to talk. That’s in the interests not only of our two countries, it’s in the interests of the whole world.”
Trump said this week that as a result of Russia’s armed seizure of three Ukrainian ships, he was considering pulling out of the one-on-one talks with Putin.
“Maybe I won’t have the meeting. Maybe I won’t even have the meeting,” he told the Washington Post on Tuesday.
In a phone call with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump expressed “deep concern” at the incident, the White House said Wednesday.
