Trump postpones next meeting with Putin until 2019

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US President Donald Trump will delay a second summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin until next year, the White House announced Wednesday.

“The President believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year,” John Bolton, the US national security adviser, explained the reason for the delay.

The White House had earlier said that Trump would meet with Putin in the fall, which drew condemnation from US lawmakers.

US President Donald Trump (L) at the White House on January 4, 2018, and special counsel Robert Mueller on Capitol Hill in 2013. /VCG Photo

The Kremlin also threw cold water on the idea of a second meeting.

Yuri Ushakov, Putin's foreign affairs adviser, told journalists in Moscow that no preparations were underway for a meeting in Washington and there were “other options that our leaders could consider.”

The pair met earlier this month in Finland for a closed-door two-hour meeting, the first formal get-together between the two leaders.

After the meeting, Trump provoked an uproar at home with comments that cast doubt on US intelligence findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has not given any public indication of when he will complete his investigation into allegations of improper ties between Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government.