The White House is planning for a possible meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, people familiar with the matter said.
A senior administration official said on Friday that U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman has been in Washington to help arrange a meeting between the two presidents. The official pointed out that the planning was still in its early stages and that the two countries need to agree on a date and location.
“This has been an ongoing project of Ambassador Huntsman, stretching back months, of getting a formal meeting between Putin and Trump,” the official said.
According to people familiar with the efforts, the meeting’s purpose is to resolve decades-old differences between the two nations, while the two leaders are expected to talk about Syria, Ukraine and nuclear-arms control during the summit.
The official added, however, that before any summit takes place, a meeting is likely to occur between General Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian General Staff. These talks would focus on de-escalation of the conflict in Syria, The Wall Street Journal informs.
The meeting would be the third one between Trump and Putin, who met twice before at the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Germany last July and at a November summit in Vietnam. It comes at a time when special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators are looking into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the presidential election in 2016.
Both Trump and Russia have repeatedly denied any collusion and election interference. Asked about a summit taking place amid the special counsel’s probe, another administration official said, “Of course there are discussions of the political perception.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a Russian news agency in late April that “President Putin is ready for such a meeting.” However, work on the Trump-Putin meeting may be delayed if negotiations on the highly-anticipated U.S.-North Korea summit continue, an administration official said.
President Trump has long said he would like better relations with Moscow, touting it as a positive improvement, “not a bad thing.”
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