President Donald Trump will hold a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday, the Kremlin said on Monday.
Trump and Lavrov will meet in Washington, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told CNN.
TPM could not independently confirm the meeting with the White House.
Additionally, the State Department announced on Sunday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will meet with Lavrov on Tuesday “to discuss a broad range of regional and bilateral issues.”
Trump last met with Lavrov in May 2017 in the Oval Office. The meeting was closed off to all press except an official White House photographer and a photographer from Russia’s state-owned TASS news outlet.
The planned meetings come as Trump and his Republican allies push the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 elections – a conspiracy theory that U.S. foreign policy experts have warned originated from the Kremlin to pin its election interference on Ukraine.
Pompeo gave cover to the false claim in November, saying that his department has “a duty” to open an investigation “any time there is information that indicates that any country has messed with American elections,” despite the fact that no such information about Ukraine exists.
