Russian President Vladimir Putin has always said he is open to talks with European leaders, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.
The remark came shortly after the end of the second day of trilateral Russia-US-Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi. European representatives, who traveled to the United Arab Emirates to meet separately with Ukrainian and American delegates, were not involved in the negotiations.
The Russian president has not yet decided whether he will attend the upcoming G20 Leaders' Summit, Peskov said. The event is scheduled for December 14-15 in Florida, US.
"Putin has always claimed and continues to claim that he is open to contact with everyone, including Europeans," he said, adding that this includes German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Merz has recently suggested that long-frozen Berlin-Moscow contacts could be renewed at the upcoming G20 summit.
"If [Putin] is there, I will not hesitate to take the opportunity to talk to him," the German chancellor said last week.
However, at the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta last month, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul refused to take part in a traditional group photo with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. “We need to avoid sending the wrong visual signal,” Wadephul told reporters.
