Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that he would be willing to meet his American counterpart Donald Trump as soon as Washington was prepared to do so. "As soon as the American side is ready this meeting would take place depending on my working schedule of course," Putin told reporters in the Chinese city of Qingdao. "The US president himself repeatedly said that he would consider such a meeting helpful. I can confirm this. Its true," Putin said. He said he did not discuss a possible meeting venue with Trump but "many" countries including Austria were keen to help in organizing such a summit. "But I believe its a technical issue," he said. "Its important for such meetings -- if they take place -- to have concrete contents." The Wall Street Journal, citing a senior European official, reported that Putin asked Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on a visit to Vienna earlier this week to help organize such a meeting and that Washington was considering it. Under the conservative Kurz, Austria has strived to act as a mediator between Russia and the West. While the EU-state imposed sanctions on Russia over Crimea along with the rest of the bloc, Austria did not expel Russian diplomats like other Western nations following the March poisoning of a Russian former double agent and his daughter in Britain, an attack London has accused Moscow of being behind. In addition, when asked about Trump’s suggestion that Russia should have been at the G7’s latest meeting, Putin said that he was ready to host the summit in Moscow. Russia was pushed out of the then G8 due to its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea four years ago. He said that Russia did not choose to leave the G7 and would be happy to host its members. Trump said on Friday that Russia should have attended a Group of Seven summit in Canada over the weekend, an idea that even Moscow seemed to reject saying it was focused on other formats. “We did not (choose to) leave it, our colleagues refused to come to Russia due to known reasons at some point. Please, we will be glad to see everyone here in Moscow,” Putin told reporters. He, however, added that the combined purchasing power of the Russia and China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a meeting of which he was attending in China, outstripped the G7. The latter currently includes the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Italy, France and Germany.