An aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin says U.S. President Donald Trump invited the Russian leader to the White House when they spoke by telephone last month.
MOSCOW — In a March phone call, President Donald Trump proposed meeting Vladimir Putin at the White House, the Kremlin said Monday, a fresh revelation about a conversation that stirred controversy for Trump’s friendly tone toward the Russian leader amid mounting tensions with the West.
After the March 20 phone call — in which Trump congratulated Putin for a re-election victory in a vote widely criticized as not free and fair — Trump said that the two leaders had discussed plans for a possible meeting.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday “a number of potential venues, including the White House,” were discussed for the summit.
A Kremlin aide, Yury Ushakov, disclosed the White House invitation in comments to Russian journalists Monday. But he added that no preparations for such a meeting have been made, according to Russian news agencies. Relations between Moscow and the West have been in a free fall since the nerve-agent poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Britain on March 4. British authorities have linked the attack to Russia, setting in motion tit-for-tat actions that have included expulsions of Russian diplomats from the United States, European Union countries and elsewhere.
“If everything will be all right, I hope that the Americans will not back away from their own proposal to discuss the possibility of holding a summit,” Ushakov said, according to state news agency RIA Novosti. “When our presidents spoke on the phone, it was Trump who proposed holding the first meeting in Washington, in the White House.”
Ushakov’s claim adds new detail to a presidential phone call that drew broad criticism last month. Trump congratulated Putin even though many international observers described Putin’s re-election victory as a sham, and despite the advice of White House advisers that he not offer congratulations.
“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-toodistant future’ at a number of potential venues, including the White House,” Sanders said in a statement after Ushakov’s comments. “We have nothing further to add at this time.”
After the March 20 phone call, Trump also drew condemnation at home and abroad for failing to bring up the poisoning of the former spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter.