Osaka, June 29 (TIWN) US President Donald Trump met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin here on Friday and appeared to make light of the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential polls by telling the latter not to meddle in the 2020 elections.

As they sat for photographs at the start of their first formal meeting in nearly a year, the US president lightheartedly sought common ground with Putin at the expense of the journalists around them in Osaka. “Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia but we do,” Trump said. To which Putin responded, in English: “We also have. It’s the same.” Twenty-six journalists have been murdered in Russia since Putin first became president, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), many of them investigative reporters scrutinising governmental abuses. Investors focus on crunch G20 meeting between Trump and Xi - as it happened Read more Trump has frequently referred to the press as the “enemy of the people” and in February the CPJ expressed concern about the safety of journalists covering Trump rallies, where they have been the target of derision and abuse from the president and his supporters. It is a year to the day since five Capital Gazette employees were killed in their newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland. The shooting led to the organisation Reporters Without Borders adding the US to its list of the five deadliest countries for journalism.