Transcript (en)

include president putin in miami in december i i don't i don't have any announcement i don't even know president putin's going to come to miami here they haven't announced that and they haven't confirmed that so i thought the president thought it was important that russia be a part of the g20 conversation because in the end everything people ask about all the time is what can you do to end the war in ukraine well just think about this for a moment in order to end the war in ukraine peacefully you're going to have to have a negotiated settlement who is that negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine. How can you have a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine if you don't have the ability to talk to both Russia and Ukraine? How can you talk to both Russia and Ukraine unless you interact with them? And so I think today is just one more opportunity to continue to interact with the Russian system. As I've said to you earlier in my conversations, the president does not view meeting with someone or talking to someone as legitimizing everything they do or everything they stand for. What he does from a practical perspective because he a person that comes from the common sense world of business not from a traditional foreign policy or traditional and archaic political class is that what he doesn accept is the idea that somehow meeting with someone legitimizes them or makes you agree with everything that they do. It's very simple. Everybody wants there to be a deal that brings about an end to this war. How can you do a deal unless you're meeting with them, unless you're talking to them, unless you're interacting with them? And that, apart from that, is the fact that Russia possesses a large number of nuclear weapons. Perhaps people don't remember that. But we will remind you that I think it is important, no matter what, putting everything else aside, it is always important that the United States and Russia have communications at some level because of the danger of escalation in the future of, God forbid, something were to go wrong. So look, our position on it remains clear, and that is if we can play a role in mediating an end to that conflict, the United States is prepared to play that role. And to play that role, we have to have the ability to communicate with both sides. We talk to the Ukrainians plenty. We talk to them you know, as much if not more than we talk to the Russian side, but we have to be able to talk to the Russian side. And one of the ways to do that is to invite him to forums like this, where they're not just hearing from us, but potentially hearing from other countries that are there as well.