Meetings between the U.S. and Russian presidents should become the "normality", German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday, adding that it is "good for all" that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin plan new talks.
"That talks are held is basically good for all, in particular between these two countries," Merkel said at her regular summer press conference.
"I find that meetings between the U.S. and Russian presidents must return to normality," she said.
Trump is planning to host Putin for talks in Washington later this year, after a first bilateral meeting in Helsinki on Monday.
Trump has come under fire following the Helsinki talks for what many saw as his unsettling embrace of the Russian strongman — and his seeming disavowal of his own intelligence agencies and their assessment that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election.
The talks in the Finnish capital were closed-door and with no one else present but interpreters.
Trump on Thursday listed the topics discussed as "stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace, North Korea and more."
Putin was last invited to the White House in 2005 by then-president George W. Bush, while former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev visited in 2010.