Russia’s Vladimir Putin is teasing President Donald Trump with a potential visit to his Florida golf club to attend the G20 summit.
The Kremlin said Friday that Putin could make the trip to December’s summit—a day after Trump suggested it would be helpful if he attended.
“President Putin may go to Miami as a member of the G20, or he may not go, or another Russian representative may go,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television correspondent Pavel Zarubin, according to Reuters.
That coy response comes a day after Trump, 79, suggested he would like to see Putin, 73, travel to his golf club in Miami. However, Trump conceded that he doubts the Russian autocrat would come, likely because of the war with Ukraine and rocky relationship with other member countries.
“I doubt he’d come, to be honest with you,” Trump said. “I sort of doubt he’d come.”
A source familiar with the matter tells Reuters that Russia has accepted an invitation to the next G20 summit, but it remains unclear whether Putin will attend personally or send one of his deputies.
Asked for a reaction to the Kremlin’s statement on Friday, a senior White House official told the Daily Beast: “No formal invitations have been issued at this time, but Russia is a G20 member and will be invited to attend ministerial meetings and the leaders’ summit.”
Trump’s relationship with Putin is cozier than that of his predecessors and has irked many in the West, though he maintains that no president has been as tough on Moscow as he.
The president rolled out the red carpet—literally—for Putin last summer, hosting him at a military base in Alaska for a summit centered around ending the war in Ukraine. Ultimately, nothing came of the meeting, and the war has now raged for more than four years since Russia invaded.
While Trump has made no secret of his admiration for the Russian president, he has at times grown frustrated when negotiations on Ukraine have not gone his way.
“We get a lot of bulls--t from Putin,” Trump said from the White House last July. “It’s very nice most of the time, but meaningless.”
A month-and-a-half earlier, after Russia unleashed a string of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Putin “has gone absolutely CRAZY!” He also said from the White House that week, “I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin. I’ve known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”
Lately, Trump has been firing off rockets himself—something that has been criticized by allies, who have refused to assist the U.S. in its strikes on Iran, and has drawn sharp condemnation from Pope Leo.
Trump maintains that it was a mistake to kick Russia out of the G8 in 2014 after Putin ordered the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
“He was very offended by that,” Trump said of the Obama-era decision. “I’d venture to say you probably wouldn’t be having these problems if you didn’t throw him out. I’m of the opinion that you talk to everybody.”
