Washington, October 17 — US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin to the United States for the G20 summit in December, adding that he had no idea whether the Russian leader would actually come.
“No, no, they asked to be represented. I don’t know if he’s coming. Certainly would love to have him,” Trump told reporters before boarding Marine One at the White House.
Trump raised the summit himself, unprompted, while answering a question about fuel prices. The United States holds the rotating presidency of the G20 this year. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to host the group’s foreign ministers in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 30 and 31; Trump will host the leaders’ summit on December 14 and 15 at Trump National Doral, his golf resort in Miami, Florida, the State Department has said.
The G20 brings together the world’s 19 largest economies plus the European Union and the African Union. Russia is a member — as is India, which hosted the summit in New Delhi in 2023. But Western governments have largely shunned Putin since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Friday’s remarks landed in that long-running fight over whether he should be let back into the room.
Fourteen US senators have already objected to Putin attending a summit on American soil, arguing his presence would legitimize Russia’s war against Ukraine. Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, called it “the wrong path to normalize people who are starting wars.” Rubio confirmed last month that Putin had been invited; Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was grateful for the invitation but had not yet decided whether Putin would come, promising that Russia would “actively participate in the work of the G20.”
On the war itself, Trump was asked whether he had forgotten that it was Putin who started it. “Well, you know, I know the details, okay? And at some point I’ll release the details. But I don’t care anything except for one. I want that war ended,” he said. He claimed an average of 25,000 soldiers were being killed each month, and put last month’s toll at 32,000 — figures he offered without evidence.
Trump also said he would like to reach a nuclear arms agreement involving China and Russia, though he did not expect one to materialize this year.
Asked whether Washington had restricted Ukraine’s use of Starshield — the government satellite network at the center of this week’s dispute over a communications blackout over Ukraine — Trump denied it outright: “No, we didn’t do that at all.”
The remarks cap a remarkable week in US-Russia relations. Trump has just waived sanctions under the Lindsey Graham Act that could have imposed tariffs of up to 100 percent on major buyers of Russian oil, a day before they were due to bite, and struck a diesel-supply deal with Moscow that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called a gift that would fund the war. Whether Putin walks through the door in Miami in December — joining Trump, Modi and Xi on US soil — will be the next test of how far the thaw goes, and of how much pushback it provokes.
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