(UPD 09:40) Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump have held a separate bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit.
The Russian delegation at the meeting includes Russian leader’s aide Yury Ushakov, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, and presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, RIA Novosti reports.
The U.S. delegation at the meeting includes Ivanka Trump, senior adviser Jared Kushner, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, the president's top Russia adviser and White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
Trump said before his meeting with Putin that he was going to discuss trade, protectionism and disarmament with the Russian leader.
"It is a great honor to be with President Putin. His representatives, my representatives have many things to discuss, including trade and including some disarmament, little protectionism, perhaps," Trump said at the beginning of his meeting with Putin. "We are looking forward to spending some very good time together," Trump added.
The Russian leader said before the beginning of the talks with Trump that the meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit provides a good opportunity to continue the dialogue.
"I cannot but agree with the [U.S.] President, we have something to talk about," Putin noted after Trump revealed the topics of the upcoming meeting (trade, commerce, disarmament, protectionism and so on) to reporters.
"All the topics were set out, we have not seen each other in a while, since the Helsinki meeting. It is true that our administrations worked and gave us a great opportunity to continue what we were agreeing on in Helsinki," TASS cited the Russian president as saying.
The U.S. President warned his Russian counterpart against meddling in the 2020 U.S. presidential election after reporters asked him whether he was going to deliver such a message to Putin at their talks.
"Don't meddle in this", Trump told Putin at the beginning of their bilateral meeting.
The talks started at 14:03 local time (05:03 GMT) and lasted 80 minutes.
According to the White House, the two presidents have said that "an improvement in bilateral relations would be beneficial not only for Russia and the U.S., but for the rest of the world as well." The presidents discussed the issues of Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Ukraine. "The two heads of state agreed to continue talks on arms control with President Trump telling Putin that China needs to be included in the discussions on the issue," the statement reads.
Earlier today, the two leaders had a brief conversation before the start of the G20 summit’s first working session, in which both of them took part. The leaders exchanged a couple of remarks on their way to the photographing ceremony, according to the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
