NEW YORK, Sept 23 (Reuters) – The United States has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to a December G20 meeting in Miami, Florida where he could hold a summit with President Donald Trump, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.
The Kremlin said Russia would consider the invitation.
Rubio, speaking after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, said the US remained open to engaging with Russia on the war in Ukraine, despite stalled efforts to bring an end to the conflict.
“We’ve invited President Putin to the G20. We think it’s an opportunity for him to engage not just with the president but with other world leaders. We hope that’s an invitation he’ll accept,” Rubio said.
Putin and Trump met in Anchorage, Alaska in August last year, but Putin has not visited the lower 48 states since before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that Russia was “grateful and appreciative for this invitation.”
“We will make a decision and work through it via diplomatic channels,” he added.
Rubio also said Trump could potentially meet again with China’s President Xi Jinping — who arrives in Washington for a state visit on Wednesday — at the G20 summit as well as at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Shenzhen.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Reuters; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Sonali Paul)
