Mubasher: US President Donald Trump extended an invitation to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to visit Washington this autumn, while the trip is being under discussions already.

The US president “asked Ambassador John Bolton to invite President Putin to Washington in the fall,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Thursday.

This would be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first visit to Washington since September 2015 when he met with the former US president Barack Obama on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

The announcement came after the summit between the two presidents on Monday in Helsinki, their first meeting since Trump took office in January 2017.

The invitation came despite the US president faced a torrent of criticism at home from both Democrats and some of his Republican fellows for his failure to publicly confront his Russian counterpart over Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 elections, accusing him of “collusion” with Russia during the votes.

On early Thursday, US President Trump stated that he is looking forward for the second meeting with Russian President Putin so they could start implementing what they discussed including issues pertaining the Middle East, cyber attacks, Ukraine and trade among other things.

“Getting along with President Putin getting along with Russia is positive not a negative. Now, with that being said, if that doesn’t work out I'll be the worst enemy he's ever had – the worst he's ever had,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday.

It is worth noting that Putin proposed to allow US and Russian officials to question suspects under a 1999 treaty on law enforcement.

In response, the Senate voted unanimously hours before the announcement, on a non-binding resolution to “refuse to make available any current or former diplomat, civil servant, political appointee, law enforcement official or member of the Armed Forces of the United States for questioning by the government or Vladimir Putin.”