President Vladimir Putin is prepared to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at a summit in Vietnam this weekend, Russia’s Foreign Minister confirmed Wednesday.
The two world leaders previously met on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg in July, agreeing to a local cease-fire in Syria and a working group on cybersecurity that Trump later backtracked on.
Trump has said he planned to meet Putin again during his trip to Asia to seek his help in preventing North Korea from pursuing its nuclear weapons program.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed on Wednesday that Putin was ready to meet the U.S. president at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
“President Putin is ready for this, the Americans know,” Lavrov was cited by the Interfax news agency as saying from the Vietnamese city of Da Nang.
Asked how likely it was the meeting would happen, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: "It's highly probable."
Lavrov also announced plans to discuss North Korea, Syria, Iraq and Ukraine with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at APEC.
Correction: An earlier version of this article implied that a meeting between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had been confirmed. In fact, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was only confirming Putin’s readiness to meet with Trump.
