Russian President Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he had invited U.S. President Donald Trump to Moscow and that both he and Trump were ready for further summits, but that conditions needed to be right for a meeting to take place.
Putin and Trump met in Helsinki earlier this month at a summit, but Trump faced a storm of criticism back home for his handling of the meeting.
Speaking to reporters at a summit of BRICS countries in South Africa, Putin said telephone calls between Moscow and Washington were insufficient and that both sides needed to meet to talk about issues like the Iran nuclear deal, conflicts in the Middle East, and arms control treaties.
"Regarding our meetings, I understand very well what President Trump said. He has a desire to have further meetings, to hold further meetings. I am ready for that. We need for the appropriate conditions to exist, to be created, including in our countries," Putin told a news conference.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he did not know about the 2016 meeting his son Don Jr and other campaign staff held at Trump Tower with a group of Russians who offered to provide damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton."I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr," Trump said in a post on Twitter, after a CNN report cited his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen as saying Trump had known about the meeting in advance.CNN, citing unidentified sources with knowledge of the matter, said Cohen was willing to make that assertion to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether Trump's presidential campaign had worked with Russia to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election.Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating Cohen for possible bank and tax fraud, and for possible campaign law violations linked to a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, a person familiar with the investigation has told Reuters. The payment to Daniels, who says she had an intimate relationship with Trump, was meant to buy her silence over the affair.Trump suggested Cohen was implicating Trump in exchange for possible immunity on unrelated charges related to his businesses."Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam," Trump wrote in a series of Twitter posts, without adding details to support his claim. In another tweet, he again denied any collusion with Moscow and denounced the Mueller probe as a witch hunt.Cohen did not immediately return a request for comment on Trump's tweet. 
Trump says did not know of 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians
"We are ready for such meetings. We are ready to invite President Trump to Moscow. By all means. By the way, he has such an invitation, I told him about that."
"I am ready to go to Washington. I repeat once again, if the right conditions for work are created."
Putin said in the meantime, it was possible that he and Trump would meet on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit, or another international event.
In a reference to the backlash inside the United States after Trump's performance at the Helsinki summit, Putin said: "Despite the difficulties, in this particular case difficulties linked to the internal political situation in the United States, life goes on and our contacts continue."