Trump invites Putin to the US

In a Twitter post, Saunders said Trump has ordered national security adviser John Bolton to make the invitation for autumn.

The news comes a few days after the first Trump-Put summit, which took place on July 16th in Helsinki, Finland, which caused anger in the US due to Trump's failure to publicly oppose Putin for Moscow's intervention in the US presidential election in 2016.

American lawmakers and other officials have not yet been informed of what Trump and Putin have discussed at the private meeting, with only the presence of translators.

Even Trump National Intelligence Director Dan Coats said he doesn't know what happened in Helsinki.

The scheduled invitation to Washington is expected to be seen as victory by Putin, who made the last official visit to the US in July 2007.

On Thursday, both Trump and Putin described their first meeting as success, while blaming US forces for trying to undermine their achievements. Despite the criticism, Trump said he welcomes a second meeting with the Russian leader.

The leader of the Democrats in the American Senate, Chuck Schumer, immediately criticised the planned invitation.

Until we know what happened at that two-hour meeting in Helsinki, the president should no longer have eye-to-eye interactions with Putin, either in the United States or in Russia or elsewhere”, Schumer said.

The last official visit of a Russian president to the United States was made in June 2010 by Dmitry Medvedev, now Russia's prime minister.

According to critics, Trump has been given sufficient opportunity at the joint press conference to rebuke Putin, regarding Russian intervention in American elections, but he has decided to accept Putin's denials in the face of US intelligence agencies' findings.

Trump, then, said he was misinterpreted.