Macron reportedly asked Putin not to privately meet Trump during WWI commemorations - but they talked anyway
- Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin both attended a World War I commemorative event in Paris this weekend.
- Putin said on Sunday that France asked that he and Trump not meet one-on-one at the event, and that he agreed to the request.
- But later that day he said he did end up having a brief conversation with Trump, describing the chat as a "good" one.
- The two leaders were meant to sit next to each other at lunch, but France changed the seating plan at the last minute.
- Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that French President Emmanuel Macron personally asked that Trump and Putin not meet so that they don't upstage him.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said France specifically asked him not to hold one-on-one meetings with Donald Trump during World War I commemorations in Paris this weekend - but he ended up chatting to him anyway.
Putin said on Sunday afternoon that he agreed to the request so as to "not violate" France's planned events. He told the state-owned RT news channel, according to the state-run Interfax news agency: "We will agree that we will not violate the schedule of the host party here: at their request, we will not organize any meetings here."
Less than an hour later, however, Putin told reporters that he did end up having a brief conversation with Trump.
When asked by journalists whether he had a chance to talk to Trump, Putin said "yes," Interfax and RT reported. According to RT, Putin added that the chat was "good." Where and when that talk took place is not clear.
The leaders had been in Paris over the weekend to mark 100 years since the armistice that ended World War I. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian President Justin Trudeau, and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker also attended the commemoration.
It was the first time the two leaders met since their summit in Helsinki in July, during which Trump claimed that he didn't "see any reason" why Russia would interfere in the 2016 presidential elections. National-security experts said that the US president behaved like a "controlled spy."
According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, the request that Putin and Trump not meet one-on-one came from French President Emmanuel Macron himself.
The French president asked that his Russian and US counterparts not hold negotiations in Paris so that they would not "eclipse" the events and meetings that Paris had organized, Kommersant said, a European diplomatic source.
Paris' eagerness that Trump and Putin not meet even resulted in the last-minute change in the seating plan at a lunch for the leaders at the Elysée Paris, RT reported.
A preliminary seating plan of the lunch showed Trump placed next to Putin, The Guardian reported, but photos of the lunch released by the Russian presidency showed Putin seated between Juncker and UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
Trump, meanwhile, was placed next to Macron, who was sat opposite Putin - making it difficult for the US and Russian presidents to have personal asides, The Guardian reported.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the leaders discussed a "variety of issues," including the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty that Trump threatened to withdraw from, North Korea, and Syria.
Putin said he hopes to meet Trump one-on-one on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina in late November instead, RT and Interfax reported.