MOSCOW, July 20 - RIA Novosti. Russian President Vladimir Putin invited the US leader Donald Trump to hold a referendum in the Donbass at the talks in Helsinki, this could be one of the ways to resolve the crisis in the Donbass, Bloomberg said.

Sources of the publication that allegedly attended Putin's meeting with ambassadors and permanent representatives of Russia said that the referendum was under the auspices of international organizations, where residents of the self-proclaimed republics of Ukraine would express their opinion on the status of the territories.

Putin and Trump agreed not to inform everyone about this plan so that the US president could think about it, Bloomberg's interlocutors added.

Summit in Helsinki

On Monday, Putin and Trump held the first full-fledged meeting in Helsinki. Their conversation lasted a total of four hours. It began with a tete-a-tete meeting, which took longer than anticipated.

The American leader positively assessed the meeting with his Russian counterpart. He stressed that relations with Russia are important for the US and the world, and said that Moscow and Washington should find an opportunity to cooperate. Putin at the final press conference said that the parties went through virtually the entire spectrum of bilateral relations and the international agenda and in some places even reached practical agreements.

According to him, during the meeting they discussed the situation in Ukraine. The leaders of the two countries stressed the importance of implementing the Minsk agreements.

"The United States could more resolutely insist on this and set up the Ukrainian leadership for this work," Putin said after talks with Trump.

In an interview with the First Channel, he said that during the talks the parties also agreed to work at an expert level on the settlement of the crisis in Ukraine.

In his opinion, this can be an element of the movement forward.

The situation in eastern Ukraine

In April 2014, Kiev launched a military operation against self-proclaimed LNR and the DNR, which declared independence after a coup in the country. According to the latest UN data, more than ten thousand people became victims of the conflict.

The issue of settling the situation in the Donbass is discussed at a meeting of the contact group in Minsk. Since 2014, it has adopted three documents regulating the steps to de-escalate the conflict. However, after the armistice agreements between the parties, military actions are continuing.