MOSCOW, November 11. /TASS/. Budapest will be a preferable location for Moscow for a meeting between the Russian and US leaders if Washington returns to its initiative and shows readiness to begin preparing for the summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"If and when our US colleagues return to their proposal and will be ready to begin preparing the high-level meeting so that it indeed ends productively – certainly, Budapest will be a preferable location for us. Especially since [US President] Donald Trump at a meeting with [Hungarian Prime Minister] Viktor Orban confirmed that Budapest is preferable for Washington as well," he said in an interview with Russian media outlets, including TASS.
Earlier, Trump also said that he would like to keep Budapest as the site of a potential meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On October 16, Trump, following a phone conversation with Putin, said that they had agreed to meet in Budapest soon.
On October 20, Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a phone call where they discussed potential steps to implement the understandings reached during the Putin-Trump phone talks. Later, the meeting was postponed indefinitely.
Earlier, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that the Russia-US Budapest summit will be relevant at a certain stage for both sides but scrupulous preparatory work must precede the meeting between the two leaders.