The White House confirmed that US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin discussed sanctions related to Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 US election, the media reported.
“There were sanctions specific to election meddling that I believe were discussed, but not beyond that,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Monday at an off-camera briefing.
The discussion took place when Trump and Putin held their first in-person meeting at the G20 summit on July 7, in Hamburg, Germany, The Hill magazine reported.
The high-stakes encounter came amid a federal probe into Russian election-meddling efforts, as well as tensions over conflicts in Syria and Ukraine.
Trump tweeted on Sunday that, “sanctions were not discussed at my meeting with President Putin. Nothing will be done until the Ukrainian and Syrian problems are solved!”
Sanders, however, said Trump’s views on sanctions did not change as a result of the meeting.