President Trump will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time on Friday, the White House confirmed.
The meeting will take place at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, and a Kremlin spokesman said Putin will demand Trump return Russian compounds in the United States that were closed by the Obama administration in reaction to 2016 election interference.
Russian news agencies claimed Putin has shown “remarkable restraint” in not responding to the move by the previous administration, the AP reported.
The White House said Trump will participate in a “normal bilateral meeting” in the afternoon and that it would have no further comment Tuesday. Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin is planning to have a “full-fledged, sit-down meeting.”
The dialogue will likely also include the war in Syria and instability in Ukraine, where the United States has condemned Moscow for fueling a low-level civil war in the east of the country, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said according to the Russian news site RT.
“At least we believe that the American side will be ready for such dialogue and we will see how the conversation goes. Eventually, everything depends on the leaders,” Ryabkov said.
Trump has pushed for a renewed relationship with Moscow and has reportedly weighed returning the compounds.
But his efforts to improve ties have been hampered by that country’s hacking and disinformation campaign during the presidential race and subsequent investigations by Congress and independent counsel Robert Mueller.
The U.S. intelligence community determined Russia’s effort was directed personally by Putin and was aimed at defeating Trump’s Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton.
