Trump is invited to Moscow, Putin says
But timing must be right, he adds
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is willing to visit Moscow, the White House said Friday, hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin said Trump “has such an invitation.”
The statement comes as Trump is coming under increasing scrutiny after the summit between the two leaders last week in Helsinki.
“Presi- dent Trump looks forward to having President Putin to Washington after the first of the year, and he is open to visiting Moscow upon receiving a formal invitation,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
On Wednesday, the White House announced that a planned follow-up meeting between Trump and Putin in Washington, originally expected to take place this fall, will instead be pushed to next year.
Putin said Friday that he was prepared to visit Trump in Washington and
that he had also invited the president to Moscow. Either way, Putin said, the timing for such a visit had to be right — an apparent reference to White House claims that the next Putin-Trump summit needs to wait until after the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
“By the way, he has such an invitation,” Putin said at a news conference at an international summit in Johannesburg on Friday, referring to the possibility of a Trump visit to Moscow. “I’m also prepared to come to Washington but, I’ll repeat, only if the appropriate conditions are created there.”
Putin said he and Trump have important matters to discuss, including Iran, the war in Syria, and the looming expiration of the New Start nuclear arms control treaty in 2021. He ratcheted up his frequent, public praise of the
Putin said he and Trump have important matters to discuss, including Iran, the war in Syria, and the looming expiration of the New Start nuclear arms control treaty in 2021.
U.S. president, describing him as a rare politician who keeps his campaign promises. In the past, Putin has noted that those promises included better ties with Russia.
The summit in Helsinki seems to have raised the Kremlin’s hopes that Trump will stand by his repeated pledges to improve relations with Moscow, despite a series of tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and a raft of new sanctions imposed on Russia since Trump took office.
“After elections, some leaders generally quickly forget what it was they promised the people during their campaign,” Putin said. “Trump doesn’t.”
Unlike Trump, who came under heavy fire from critics at home for what many viewed as his fawning behavior in Finland, Putin has won only praise in Russia for the meeting, which the foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, described as “better than super.”
Trump stirred fury among his opponents and among some Republican lawmakers for suggesting in Helsinki that he trusted Putin’s denials of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump was further criticized when he revealed unexpectedly that he planned to invite Putin to Washington for a follow-up meeting in the fall. But less than a week later, the White House said it had postponed the plan, and that Putin would not visit while Mueller’s investigation is underway.
Addressing the delay, the U.S. national security adviser, John Bolton, said in a statement Wednesday that Trump had decided “the next bilateral meeting with President
Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year.”
Referring to U.S. backlash against Trump over his performance in Helsinki, Putin said political turbulence in the United States would not derail contacts between the two leaders.
“Despite the difficulties, in this particular case, difficulties linked to the internal political situation in the United States, life goes on and our contacts continue,” he said.
Putin did not specify Friday when he had told Trump about the invitation to Moscow, which he announced at the end of a summit for the so-called BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Republican lawmakers have made it clear they are not eager to see Putin, who intelligence officials say was aware of the 2016 interference.
Putin “will not be welcome” at the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said such invitations are reserved “for allies.”
Trump was meeting Friday with his national security team to discuss threats to the 2018 congressional midterm elections, the first such session he has convened amid warnings from intelligence officials that Russia is again intent on interfering in the U.S. democratic process.
The White House has taken steps in recent days to tamp down concerns over the United States’ Russia policy sparked by the summit.
Since Helsinki, Trump has tried to walk back at least some of his comments. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that despite Trump’s public statements that allegations of Russian interference are “a hoax,” he accepts the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia did meddle in the 2016 election. Information for this article was contributed by Felicia Sonmez and Anton Troianovski of The Washington Post; by Andrew Higgins of The New York Times; and by Matthew Lee, Ken Thomas, Jill Colvin, Darlene Superville and Jim Heintz of The Associated Press.