Moscow: US President Donald Trump didn’t just propose a summit meeting to Vladimir Putin when he called the Russian leader last month. He invited him to the White House, according to the Kremlin.

“When our presidents spoke on the phone, Trump suggested having the meeting in Washington at the White House,” Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters on Monday. “This is quite an interesting, positive idea.”

The two sides have had no preparatory discussions since the March 20 call because of their tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats over the poisoning of a former spy in the UK, Ushakov said. “I hope the Americans won’t abandon their proposal to discuss the possibility of holding the summit,” he said.

On March 20, Trump called Putin to congratulate him on his re-election, and the US leader told reporters afterwards that the two would “probably get together in the not-too-distant future.”

In calling Putin, Trump ignored explicit advice from his national security advisers not to do so, The Washington Post has reported, quoting officials familiar with the call.

Ushakov said on Monday, however, that the two sides have not had any “concrete discussions” about the summit since that rare Trump-Putin phone conversation.

“It was Trump himself who proposed holding the meeting,” Ushakov said.

“But after that a new breakdown in our bilateral ties has taken place, the diplomats have been expelled.”

He expressed the hope that Russia and the United States could return to “constructive and serious dialogue.”

After the call, Washington expelled 60 Russian diplomats and shut down a Russian consulate in Seattle, joining Britain’s allies in responding to the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury on March 4.

Moscow responded by sending home 60 US diplomats and closing Washington’s consulate in Saint Petersburg.

Washington has, however, said Russia is free to apply to accredit more diplomats to replace those expelled.

The prospect of Putin visiting Washington is likely to sharpen divisions in the US over relations with Russia amid continued tensions regarding alleged Kremlin meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections. Russia denies meddling. Trump won bipartisan praise in Congress for ordering the expulsion last week of 60 Russian diplomats regarded as spies, the most since 1986, in a display of unity with Europe after the UK blamed Putin’s government for the March 4 nerve-agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal in England.

While Trump and Putin ordered summit preparations to begin after their phone call, the expulsions meant “there was no time for discussion and there wasn’t even anyone to discuss it with,” Ushakov said. The Kremlin hopes the US has now stopped its actions against Russia so that “serious and constructive dialogue” can start, he said.

How far a row escalates between Moscow and the West over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain does not depend on Russia, its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news briefing on Monday.

In times of cold war there were some rules, but now Britain and the United States had dropped all propriety and were playing children’s games, he said.

Russia has denied responsibility for the March 4 attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury.

Lavrov also suggested that the poisoning could benefit the British government by distracting attention from problems around Brexit.

“This could be in the interests of the British government which found itself in an uncomfortable situation having failed to fulfil promises to its electorate about the conditions for Brexit,” Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow, referring to Britain’s planned departure from the European Union.

Lavrov said that the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter “could also be in the interests of the British special forces who are known for their abilities to act with a licence to kill”.

“There could be a whole number of reasons and none of them can be ruled out,” Lavrov said.

Britain has said it was “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the attack using a nerve agent developed in the USSR, a view backed up by its Western allies.

But Russia denies any involvement and has called for Britain to give it access to the nerve agent used.

Lavrov insisted that “serious experts “and “leaders of a whole number of countries” are questioning Britain’s account of the crime.

“Britain, I think, will not manage to evade answering these questions. Because they are already only too obvious and it’s only too obvious that our British colleagues have lost their sense of reality.”

Lavrov complained that the British authorities have still not give consular access to “our citizens,” and that the situation had not changed despite Yulia Skripal’s improved condition.