Kremlin says Putin-Trump meeting needs to be organised 'promptly'

MOSCOW: The Kremlin said Thursday that a face-to-face meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin needed to be organised “promptly”, after the two presidents held a lengthy phone call the day before.

Trump said the pair agreed to “immediately” start negotiations on the Ukraine conflict during the call, which marked the first direct presidential contact between Washington and Moscow in three years.

“There is definitely a need to organise such a meeting quite promptly, the heads of state have a lot to talk about,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Trump said Wednesday he expected to meet Putin in Saudi Arabia.

Russia also wants to discuss European security in any negotiations with the US, Peskov said, in an apparent reference to Putin’s concerns about NATO expansion.

Before launching the Ukraine offensive in 2022, Moscow demanded that the military alliance roll back to its 1997 borders — which would exclude all of the Baltic states as well as Poland.

Putin used the expansion of NATO as a pretext to launch the full-scale military assault on Ukraine.

“Certainly, all issues related to security on the European continent, especially in those aspects that concern our country, the Russian Federation, should be discussed comprehensively, and we expect that to be the case,” Peskov said.