President Trump will meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Paris next month, officials from the White House and Moscow have confirmed.
National-security adviser John Bolton met with Putin on Tuesday in Moscow, where the Russian leader suggested a meeting with Trump would be useful in the wake of “unprovoked moves that are hard to call friendly.”
“We will make the precise arrangements on that, but it will happen in connection with the 100th anniversary, the celebration of the armistice that the French are hosting on November the 11th,” Bolton later told reporters.
The meeting will reportedly focus on the war in Syria, America’s desire for Russia to enforce international sanctions on Iran and North Korea, and Trump’s decision to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a Reagan-era nuclear-arms deal.
“Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years,” Trump said. ” I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out. And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we’re not allowed to.”
Bolton gave official notice to Russia on Tuesday that the U.S. is withdrawing from the agreement.
Trump and Putin have not met since their one-on-one July summit in Helsinki. Trump was heavily criticized for his press conference after that meeting, in which he appeared to accept Putin’s denials that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.
An invitation for Putin to visit D.C. is also outstanding, and another summit there may materialize next year.