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Trump Is Open To Visiting Russia If Putin Invites Him, White House Says

By Philip Ewing
Published July 27, 2018 at 10:21 AM CDT
President Trump met with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16. The two leaders may not meet again one-on-one until next year.
Alexey Nikolsky
/
AFP/Getty Images
President Trump met with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16. The two leaders may not meet again one-on-one until next year.

President Trump is open to visiting Russia if President Vladimir Putin extends a formal invitation, the White House said on Friday.

Putin said in South Africa earlier in the day that he has already talked with Trump about a visit to Russia, although it did not appear that the Russian government has gone through the official protocols involved with following up.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump is open to receiving the official invitation and that Trump "looks forward" to a Putin visit to the United States sometime next year.

Sanders made no mention of Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Earlier, the White House said Trump would postpone his invitation for Putin to visit until next year because it believed Mueller's "witch hunt" would be over by then.

Sanders' statement suggested that the administration is now open to a Putin visit irrespective of whether Mueller's investigation is completed or not.

It hasn't been clear whether Trump's earlier announcement, that he wanted to postpone an invitation to Putin, was due to wariness by the Kremlin about agreeing to the trip or some other reason.

There's also no indication about when Mueller's work might be complete.

Trump and Putin may meet on the sidelines of an international conference at some point, the Russian government had said, but the upshot of Friday's back-and-forth was that both leaders want another bilateral summit as well at some point.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Philip Ewing
Philip Ewing is an election security editor with NPR's Washington Desk. He helps oversee coverage of election security, voting, disinformation, active measures and other issues. Ewing joined the Washington Desk from his previous role as NPR's national security editor, in which he helped direct coverage of the military, intelligence community, counterterrorism, veterans and more. He came to NPR in 2015 from Politico, where he was a Pentagon correspondent and defense editor. Previously, he served as managing editor of Military.com, and before that he covered the U.S. Navy for the Military Times newspapers.
See stories by Philip Ewing