Newsdeck

Newsdeck

Kremlin says Putin ‘supports dialogue’ after Trump’s proposed G7 invite

Kremlin says Putin ‘supports dialogue’ after Trump’s proposed G7 invite
epa08308225 (FILE) - (L-R) EU Council President Donald Tusk, Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, US President Donald J. Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, attend a work session during the G7 summit at Casino in Biarritz, France, 26 August 2019 (Reissued 19 March 2020). According to reports, the 46th G7 summit, scheduled for 10 to 12 June 2020 in Camp David, Maryland, USA, will be cancelled and held as a teleconference instead to fight the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. EPA-EFE/IAN LANGSDON / POOL

MOSCOW, June 1 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday it needed more details before responding to U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal to invite Russia to attend a Group of Seven nations summit, but that President Vladimir Putin supported dialogue on the issue.

Trump said on Saturday he would postpone a G7 summit he had hoped to hold next month until September or later and expand the list of invitees to include Australia, Russia, South Korea and India.

“President Putin is a supporter of dialogue in all directions, but in this case, in order to respond to such initiatives, we need to receive more information, which we unfortunately do not have,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

“We don’t know the details of this proposal yet, we don’t know if it is official,” he said, adding that Moscow needed to know what might be on the agenda of the proposed meeting and its format, before responding.

Russia was expelled from what was then the G8 in 2014 when Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, was U.S. president, after Moscow annexed the Crimea region from Ukraine. Russia still holds the territory, and various G7 governments have rebuffed previous calls from Trump to readmit Moscow.

Peskov said other formats such as the G20 gave Russia a platform to discuss international issues with other countries.

“There are very comfortable and effective mechanisms for all participants for international dialogue, such as the G20, which allows the world’s leading economies to discuss the most pressing problems,” he said.

Some Russian analysts believe Moscow should regard Trump’s potential invitation with scepticism.

“Trump’s intention to invite Putin as a guest of the #G7 makes no sense for Russia. All blame, no gain is what it’ll get. This chapter should remain closed,” Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and a former colonel in the Russian army, wrote on Twitter on Sunday. (Reporting by Alexander Marrow, Maxim Rodionov and Andrey Kuzmin; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Gallery

Please peer review 3 community comments before your comment can be posted

We would like our readers to start paying for Daily Maverick...

…but we are not going to force you to. Over 10 million users come to us each month for the news. We have not put it behind a paywall because the truth should not be a luxury.

Instead we ask our readers who can afford to contribute, even a small amount each month, to do so.

If you appreciate it and want to see us keep going then please consider contributing whatever you can.

Support Daily Maverick→
Payment options

Become a Maverick Insider

This could have been a paywall

On another site this would have been a paywall. Maverick Insider keeps our content free for all.

Become an Insider

Every seed of hope will one day sprout.

South African citizens throughout the country are standing up for our human rights. Stay informed, connected and inspired by our weekly FREE Maverick Citizen newsletter.