The full-format meeting that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his United States (US) counterpart, Donald Trump, held on Friday on the sidelines of the G20 summit gives hope that Russian-US relations could improve, Sputnik news agency reported, quoting Vladimir Dzhabarov, the deputy chairman of the Russian upper house’s foreign affairs committee.
Putin and Trump talked for one and a half hour on the sidelines of the summit, currently ongoing in the Japanese city of Osaka.
They discussed the situations in Syria, Iran, Venezuela and Ukraine, agreed to continue negotiations on a new model of arms control and also noted that improving bilateral relations would be mutually beneficial.
“The fact that the meeting took place, and such a wide range of issues was discussed shows that there are prospects for improving the relations between our countries and that our leaders can listen to each other, have discussions and move forward in resolving differences,” Dzhabarov said.
The lawmaker voiced the belief that experts could be ordered to make effort to prolong the Russian-US New START arms reduction treaty after the talks.
“I believe they touched upon the New START, which terminates in 2020. We can expect that experts will receive a signal to prepare either prolongation of the treaty or a new variant of the treaty,” Dzhabarov said.
In OSAKA, Sputnik news agency reported Putin as saying that Russia, India and China could voice together in favour of reforming the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and preserving the World Trade Organisation (WTO)’s universal role of a fundamental trade structure.
“As I see it, our countries could voice together in favour of strengthening the prestige of the WTO and preserving its role of a universal structure regulating international trade … Supporting effort to reform the IMF is another important task,” Putin said at his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, held on the sidelines of the G20 summit.