The key facts
- Rubio and Lavrov briefly discussed the possibility of Putin and Trump communicating at APEC in China
- There was no separate meeting of the ministers — the contact took place at the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting
- Earlier, Ushakov said that a bilateral meeting of the leaders at APEC had not yet been agreed
A brief conversation on the sidelines of the G20
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a press conference in Atlanta, that the possibility of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump communicating at the November APEC summit was one of the topics of his brief conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The contact took place during the meeting of foreign ministers of the G20 countries; the ministers did not hold a separate meeting. “We did not hold a meeting. We talked,” Rubio explained.
What was agreed — and what was not
According to the American diplomat, the interlocutors only briefly touched on the possibility of the presidents interacting on the sidelines of APEC in China. Rubio did not announce any agreement to hold such talks. The parties also discussed the lack of specific commitments on the G20, but he gave no details of that part of the conversation.
What is known about the leaders’ meeting
The situation with a possible contact between Putin and Trump remains unagreed: On October 25, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said, that a separate meeting of the leaders at APEC had not yet been agreed. Before that, as Life.ru reported, a trilateral format involving Chinese President Xi Jinping was discussed primarily, while Ushakov allowed for the possibility of the Russian and American leaders speaking in person on a shared platform. Rubio’s statement, therefore, does not change the status of bilateral talks: it concerns only a brief mention of the topic in a conversation between the ministers, not a decision made.
