Door opens to TrumpPutin summit
President issued invitation in March
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — An aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump invited the Russian leader to the White House when they spoke by telephone last month, but the two countries haven’t started any preparations for such a visit.
Soon after, the Trump administration opened the door to a potential White House meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, raising the possibility of an Oval Office welcome for the Russian leader for the first time in more than a decade even as relations between the two powers have deteriorated.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin had a telephone conversation on March 20 in which Mr. Trump congratulated Mr. Putin on winning the Russian presidential election two days earlier. The White House and the
Kremlin said at the time the two presidents discussed meeting in person.
Mr. Trump specifically invited Mr. Putin to the White House during the call, Putin aide Yuri Ushakov told Russian news agencies Monday, adding that, “This is a rather positive idea.”
However, their governments didn’t have time to start arranging a meeting before the United States joined Britain and more than two dozen allies in sanctioning Russia over the nerve-agent poisoning of a Russian ex-spy in England, Mr. Ushakov said.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that when Mr. Trump called Mr. Putin last month, he not only ignored advisers’ pleas that he not congratulate the Russian leader on his lopsided election victory but also suggested that Mr. Putin visit the White House. But in a statement on the fresh revelation about the conversation, she also said the Executive Mansion was among “a number of potential venues” the two leaders discussed for a bilateral meeting.
“As the President himself confirmed on March 20, hours after his last call with President Putin, the two had discussed a bilateral meeting in the ‘not-too-distant future’ at a number of potential venues, including the White House,” Ms. Sanders said, adding that the administration had no further comment on the matter.
Mr. Trump had told reporters in the Oval Office shortly after his call with the Russian leader that “probably we’ll be seeing President Putin in the not-too-distant future,” but officials said at the time that there were no plans for the two men to meet before November, when they are both expected to attend a Group of 20 gathering in Argentina.
Some Republican lawmakers criticized Mr. Trump for making the congratulatory call to Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump defended his decision on Twitter, saying then-President Barack Obama did the same in 2012.
The president drew bipartisan criticism for his call, both because he congratulated Mr. Putin after an election widely seen as a sham and because he didn’t mention either a recent nerveagent attack in England blamed on Russia or its interference in the 2016 U.S. election campaign.
The prospect of Mr. Putin visiting Washington is expected to sharpen divisions in the U.S. over relations with Russia amid continued tensions regarding alleged Kremlin meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Russia denies meddling. Mr. Trump won bipartisan praise in Congress for ordering the expulsion last week of 60 Russian diplomats regarded as spies, the most since 1986, in a display of unity with Europe after the U.K. blamed Mr. Putin’s government for the March 4 nerve-agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal in England.
Nothing more was said about a meeting subsequently, by either country, as the United States and some allies imposed additional sanctions and expelled Russian diplomats.
While Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin ordered summit preparations to begin after their phone call, the tit-for-tat expulsions meant “there was no time for discussion and there wasn’t even anyone to discuss it with,” Mr. Ushakov said. The Kremlin hopes the U.S. has now stopped its actions against Russia so that “serious and constructive dialogue” can start, he said.
If it happens, Mr. Putin would be getting the honor of an Oval Office tete-a-tete for the first time since he met President George W. Bush at the White House in 2005.
Bloomberg News, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post contributed.