Putin continues calling world leaders to boast about upcoming meeting with Trump
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has continued holding phone conversations with the presidents and prime ministers of various countries, telling them about US representative Steve Witkoff’s visit to Moscow and boasting that he will soon be travelling to Alaska to meet with US President Donald Trump.
Source: Kremlin on Telegram
Details: On 11 August, Putin spoke with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in a phone call reportedly initiated by the Armenian side. Pashinyan briefed the Kremlin leader on the outcome of his meeting with Trump and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Washington on 8 August.
"In turn, Putin spoke about the main outcomes of his conversation with the US president’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and preparations for the meeting with Donald Trump in Alaska," the Kremlin stated.
The Kremlin press service also reported that over the weekend, Putin had phone conversations with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon and Kyrgyzstan’s President Sadyr Japarov. He told each of the leaders about his talk with Witkoff and boasted about having arranged the meeting with Trump in Alaska.
Why this matters: Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin has been persona non grata at many international meetings that Russia had always previously attended. He is no longer invited to Europe, the US, or other countries. Many nations’ leaders have not visited Russia since then or even talked to Putin on the phone, and many countries have closed their airspace to aircraft from Russia. As a result, since 2022 Putin has only travelled to Belarus and some Asian countries.
According to open sources, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin has visited Belarus (five times), Kazakhstan (four times), China (twice), Turkmenistan (twice), Kyrgyzstan (twice), Uzbekistan (twice), and Tajikistan, Iran, Armenia, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Vietnam, Azerbaijan and Mongolia (once each).
Putin has made only one foreign trip this year, to Belarus.
Background:
- On 8 August, Putin held phone calls with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the presidents of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and the self-proclaimed leader of Belarus, discussing the US and Ukraine with all of them.
- On the same day, he also spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about Ukraine and bilateral relations.
- On 9 August, Trump announced that a meeting with Putin will be held in Alaska on 15 August.
- Media outlets have reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may also join the summit
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