Putin invites Trump to Moscow for face-to-face meeting

Mr Trump had recently invited the Russian president to the White House.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin (AP)

Russian president Vladimir Putin has invited US president Donald Trump to Moscow for a meeting, he has said, but the conditions "need to be right".

Speaking during a visit to Johannesburg, South Africa, he also said of Mr Trump's invitation to the White House that he is "ready to go to Washington".

Mr Trump had invited Mr Putin to the White House last week, after a controversial joint press conference held by the two world leaders in Helsinki. During the conference, Mr Trump refused to denounce Russia for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

After receiving sharp public backlash for appearing to not accept conclusions from US intelligence agencies that Russia did indeed meddle in the US election, the US president later backtracked, claiming he misspoke in Helsinki. Mr Trump clarified his comments while speaking at the White House, saying he accepts conclusions from US intelligence agencies.

The White House has since announced that Mr Trump had postponed his meeting with the Russian president on US soil. The postponement announcement came shortly after Russian officials appeared to cast doubt on whether Mr Putin would accept the invitation to the White House for a follow-up summit.

"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,” said Mr Trump's national security adviser in a statement regarding the postponed invitation. "So we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year."

A number of top Republicans have publicly criticised Mr Trump's performance at the Helsinki summit. John McCain, a senator from Arizona, called the US president's comments made side-by-side Mr Putin "disgraceful".

"Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory," he said.

He added, "President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world."

Mr Putin was in the South African city for a meeting of the BRICS nations - made up of the five major developing global economies; Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

During the conference, Mr Putin said that sanctions against his country have turned currency "into a weapon".