President Trump said Thursday that he “probably” will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a weekend gathering of world leaders in Argentina, but that he still still may cancel the plans over the Ukraine crisis.
Trump intends to have a bilateral meeting with Putin and a handful of other leaders at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, the White House said this week, but the potential meeting with Putin comes at a time of heightened political and legal tension relating to a probe of Trump campaign contacts with Russia.
[New: Trump cancels meeting with Putin in Argentina]
Trump said in a Tuesday interview with the Washington Post he may cancel the Putin meeting after Russia’s military seized Ukrainian sailors and ships near the disputed Crimean peninsula.
“I probably will be meeting with President Putin, we haven’t terminated that meeting. I was thinking about it, but we haven’t,” Trump said on the South Lawn of the White House, before a daylong flight to South America.
“They’d like to have it. I think it’s a very good time to have the meeting,” he said, before saying he may still cancel the meeting because of the Ukraine crisis.
“I’m getting a full report on the plane as to what happened, with respect to that, and that will determine what I’m going to be doing,” Trump said. “We are getting a finalized report, I’m going to have it on the plane sometime today.”
Trump spoke moments after his former attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in connection to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Trump’s vacillations on a potential Putin meeting follow a similar series of on-again, off-again developments ahead of Trump’s Armistice Day trip to France earlier this month. Putin and Trump agreed to meet in Paris for the first time since a politically explosive July summit in Helsinki, but the plans fell apart, in an apparent nod to the sensibilities of French President Emmanuel Macron, though observers were kept guessing until events unfolded.
