Russia ready to discuss Putin Washington visit

Russia is ready to discuss a proposed new meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump, Interfax news agency cited Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, as saying on Friday.

The White House said on Thursday that Trump had invited Putin to visit Washington this autumn, a daring rebuttal to a torrent of criticism in the United States over Trump’s summit with Putin in Helsinki this week.

Trump stunned the world on Monday by failing to publicly confront Putin at their first summit for Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election. What happened during the one-on-one between Trump and Putin with only interpreters present remains unknown.

Antonov said Putin made concrete proposals to Trump about resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Interfax said on Friday, though he did not spell out what these were.

The Russian ambassador was cited as saying it would be good to organize a meeting between Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and U.S. counterpart James Mattis, adding that a group of U.S. lawmakers are also planning to visit Russia.

A group of Republican members of Congress traveled to Moscow for a rare trip this month, and lawmakers could visit again in the first half of August, senior lawmaker Konstantin Kosachyov was quoted as saying by TASS news agency.

Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Christian Lowe