(AFP) – The United States will invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to a G20 summit in Miami, a US official said Thursday, but President Donald Trump said he doubted his counterpart would come. The invitation would mark a major easing of international pressure on Putin, who has been shunned by most of the West but not Trump since ordering the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The United States is this year’s host of the Group of 20 major economies and Trump has promised a grandiose summit in December in his adopted home state of Florida.
“All G20 members will be invited to attend ministerial meetings and the leaders’ summit,” a senior Trump administration official said in a statement. Trump, questioned later by a reporter, seemed unaware of any invitation. “I don’t know that he’s coming. I doubt he’d come, to be honest with you,” Trump said. But Trump said he supported including Putin, explaining, “If he came, it would be probably very helpful.” He renewed criticism of former president Barack Obama for booting Russia out of the then G8 — meant as a club for wealthy democracies — in response to an earlier, more limited invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
“President Putin, he was very offended by that — rightfully,” Trump said. Trump welcomed Putin in August to Alaska, the first time the Russian leader stepped on Western soil since the invasion. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has sought to revive long-frozen relations with Russia in a bid to end the war in Ukraine. Initially promising to end the war in 24 hours, Trump’s attempts so far have delivered few tangible results, even as Moscow and Kyiv met multiple times for talks. Trump has repeatedly pinned the blame on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for refusing to surrender territory to Russia.
The Kremlin said earlier in the day that Putin had not yet decided if he would attend. “No such decisions have been made yet,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Moscow. Russia was invited at “the highest level” for the December 14-15 summit in Miami, the state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin as saying. In 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin over the war, leading the Russian leader to avoid travel to countries that in theory would be obliged to arrest him. The United States is not part of the ICC, which Trump has actively opposed. Putin has not participated in a G20 summit since 2019, first because of the coronavirus pandemic and then due to the war.
© 2024 AFP
