The Kremlin on Wednesday said that President Vladimir Putin has no plans to visit Saudi Arabia, where US leader Donald Trump is due in the coming weeks, dismissing speculation the pair could meet there.
Trump and Putin have held two known phone calls since February but have not met in person, while their officials have held talks in Riyadh.
Trump on Monday said that he could visit Saudi Arabia as early as next month.
“These are purely the plans of the US head of state, in no way related to Putin,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a daily briefing with reporters.
“Putin, so far, has no plans like that,” he added, saying that there was no concrete date or place for a “possible meeting” between Putin and Trump.
Trump is pushing for an end to the more than three-year-long conflict in Ukraine, but has recently expressed anger at both Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, with little progress made.
Last month, Washington held separate talks with both Kyiv and Moscow in Saudi Arabia, announcing that both had agreed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure and in the Black Sea.
But Moscow and Kyiv have since mutually accused each other of deliberate attacks on energy infrastructure.
