MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump are likely to meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in China in November if both leaders attend, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said Sunday.
“If the leaders are at the same event, then it seems to me they will inevitably meet and talk,” Ushakov said in an interview with Russian broadcaster VGTRK.
Ushakov stressed that Moscow had received no signals or indications that a Putin-Trump meeting was being formally planned, noting that the summit remained about three months away.
“We have to live until then. Before that, we still have many major international events,” he said.
The prospect of a meeting comes as Washington and Moscow remain at odds over the war in Ukraine and broader security issues.
Separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized NATO and European Union countries over their military support for Ukraine, saying they would not be able to distance themselves from what he described as an anti-Russian policy.
Lavrov said Moscow would take into account the actions of what he called “openly Russophobic elites” in Britain, Brussels, Paris, Berlin and other NATO and EU countries.
“They know what they are doing and are trying to publicly distance themselves from it in advance. It won’t work,” Lavrov said in a separate interview with VGTRK.
Source: Saudi Gazette