MOSCOW, June 3. /TASS/. The possibility still exists that a separate meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump will be held on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, but so far Washington has not officially put forward a proposal to organize such a meeting to Moscow, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the SophieCo program aired on the RT TV channel.
"We still don’t know wether this meeting is going to take place or not, because it wasn’t initiated officially by the American side," he said.
Peskov recalled that at the meeting with Putin in Sochi (May 14) US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "was speaking about a potential willingness to have the meeting, but this is not a reason for a meeting to take place." According to the Kremlin spokesman, such talks have to be initiated at the official level one way or another. He did not give a direct answer on what Putin will do if Trump proposes the meeting. He believes that the answer is clear. "When President Putin says something, he means it, and when he means something, he does it. This is what I know for sure for one hundred percent," Peskov emphasized.
Earlier, Trump said that he was willing to meet the Russian leader at the G20 Summit in Japan’s Osaka, set to be held from June 28 to 29. Later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the joint press conference with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo following the talks in Sochi that Moscow would support the proposal to hold such a meeting if it is officially put forward.