Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that at their July 16 summit in Helsinki U.S. President Donald Trump and he discussed new ideas for settling the situation in the south-east of Ukraine that should be further explored by experts.

"We talked about Ukraine. There are some new ideas regarding ways to settle the crisis in the south-east of this country. We agreed that they would be explored at the expert level at this point," Putin said in an exclusive interview with the Channel One TV station's 'Vremya' program on Monday evening.

"In my opinion, it is a kind of positive element of this onward movement. Maybe, it is such a very cautious assessment of mine," he said.