Putin and Trump are set to talk on the phone this weekend in their first call since The Donald's inauguration
- Trump and Putin to hold first phone conversation since January 20 inauguration
- Russian officials said on Saturday that Putin prepared to meet Trump
- Planning for a Trump-Putin summit could take months, said a Kremlin official
- Democrats accuse Putin of hacking their emails to help Trump win election
President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak on the telephone Saturday with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for the first time since taking the oath of office on Friday, CNN reported on Thursday.
The news comes just a few days after Russian officials said that Putin is prepared to meet Trump, though preparations for such a meeting could take months.
Russia-US relations were at their lowest since the Cold War under Barack Obama's administration, with tensions around conflict in Ukraine and Syria crisis.
'This will not be in coming weeks, let's hope for the best - that the meeting will happen in the coming months,' President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov told the TASS news agency on Saturday.
President Donald Trump (left) is scheduled to speak on the telephone Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin (right), for the first time since taking the oath of office on Friday
The Kremlin is voicing hope for a constructive dialogue but warning that differences will remain.
Peskov said in an interview with state television broadcast Saturday that it would be an 'illusion' to expect that US-Russian relations would be free of disagreements.
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Peskov noted the intricacy of nuclear arms control and the complexity of the situation in Syria among other challenges.
'Successful development of bilateral ties will depend on our ability to solve these differences through dialogue,' Peskov said.
Some of Trump's opponents believe the Kremlin helped him win the White House by staging a hacking campaign to hoover up embarrassing information about Clinton, his rival.
The Kremlin denies that, saying that the Democratic Party used hacking allegations as an excuse for losing to Trump.
Putin and other high-ranked Russian officials have publicly praised Trump, expecting him to lift US sanctions on Moscow, first put in place in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
Peskov said that it would be 'a big mistake' to think that Russia-US relations will be 'free of contradictions and disputes,' during a Trump presidency.
'We indeed are the two biggest countries in the world. And we can't live without frictions, conflict of interests,' Peskov was quoted by Interfax was saying on Saturday.
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