US President Donald Trump has announced that he intends to have a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the near future.
Modern.az reports that Trump said this during a conversation with journalists in Maryland. Associated Press released a video recording of the meeting.
"I have a phone call planned. It will happen very soon," Trump said.
The US President made this statement while answering a journalist's question about whether he discussed with Putin the infection discovered in Irkutsk, Russia, and diagnosed by Russian authorities as "pneumonia of unknown origin." The media, however, reported that the disease in question could be plague.
In response to a journalist's question about what US intelligence agencies said about the possibility of plague in Russia, Trump said that very serious discussions are underway and an announcement will be made about it soon.
It should be noted that on October 2, a 28-year-old employee of the Irkutsk Siberian and Far Eastern Plague Control Institute died after contracting the infection. According to preliminary assumptions, this may have been caused by damage to a test tube containing the plague pathogen. 197 people who had contact with the patient are under strict medical supervision.
On October 4, Russia's Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) announced that the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region, including the cities of Irkutsk and Shelekhov, was stable.
