US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, are set to meet in Helsinki, Finland on July 16, marking the pair's first formal face-to-face meeting, an unnamed source familiar with the plans told CNN.
Following the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov didn't rule out the possible one-on-one meeting between the two leaders.
"Indeed, we do not rule out that presidents Putin and Trump will meet face to face first, if the relevant preliminary agreement is confirmed," Peskov told reporters.
The two leaders have met previously on the sidelines of a G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany last July. Back then, at their first ever in-person meeting, Trump was accompanied by a US translator and former US secretary of state Rex Tillerson. The two-hour-long encounter was followed by an informal conversation at a dinner later the same day.
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With Donald Trump apparently having a liking for high-stakes face-to-face meetings, his upcoming talks with Putin will come as a follow-up to the historic US-North Korea summit in Singapore in June.
Trump's presidency has been overshadowed by allegations that a special bond was, in fact, at the core of his relations with Russia. The American intelligence community claimed that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign in the US to sway its results towards Trump.
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POTUS, however, has denied colluding with Moscow. Russia, in turn, has repeatedly dismissed claims of alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
