Moscow is ready to discus a visit to Washington by President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s top envoy to the US has said.
A day after Donald Trump stunned many with his surprise invitation to the Russian leader, while still trying to defend their controversial meeting in Helsinki on Monday, ambassador Anatoly Antonov said Russia believed it was “important to deal with the results” of their first summit before jumping too fast into a new one.
Mr Antonov told the Associated Press that while he had not seen the invitation from the White House, “Russia was always open to such proposals. We are ready for discussions on this subject”.
Mr Trump triggered bipartisan fury in Congress during his visit to Finland when, at a joint press conference with Mr Putin, he appeared to question his own intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. He seemed to place as much importance to the denial by Mr Putin, as he did to the view of Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence.
Mr Trump and the White House were forced to spend several days in damage limitation mode, claiming the president had misspoken in Helsinki, that he held Mr Putin personally responsible for the 2016 hacking and vowed that his government would prevent any such repeated interference during the 2018 midterms.
On Thursday morning, Mr Trump had tweeted: “The summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media.
“I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace, North Korea and more.”
Despite that, when press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted a few hours later that the president had instructed national security adviser John Bolton to reach out to Mr Putin and invite him to the nation’s capital in the autumn, it came as a surprise to most.
It certainly came as a surprise to Mr Coats, who was appearing on stage at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, where he was informed of Mr Trump’s invitation to the Russian leader.
Mr Coats, who had previously issued a statement pushing back at Mr Trump’s comment in Helsinki, said: “Say that again. Did I hear you?”
When his interlocutor confirmed the news, he responded: “Okaaaay That’s going to be special.”
The AP said Mr Antonov gave a few more details of what Mr Trump and Mr Putin talked about in Helsinki, but insisted that diplomatic discussions should remain discreet in order to be effective. He notably claimed the two men discussed a possible referendum in eastern Ukraine.
“This issue was discussed,” he said, adding without elaborating that Mr Putin made “concrete proposals” to Mr Trump on solutions for the Ukraine conflict.
While Mr Trump tweeted that the two men discussed Ukraine, he did not mention a possible referendum and has not revealed specifics of the Ukraine discussions. The US and Russia have been on opposing sides of the conflict in Ukraine, unleashed after a popular uprising against a pro-Russian president and Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Ukraine and European powers are unlikely to support a referendum in the Donbass region, where pro-Russian separatists hold sway.
