Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a news conference on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Singapore November 15, 2018. Sputnik/Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin via REUTERS

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. Vice President Mike Pence Russia had nothing to do with meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, Interfax reported on Monday, during discussions about an upcoming meeting between Putin and President Donald Trump.

Putin and Pence spoke in Singapore last week about key issues that could be discussed at the meeting between the two leaders, expected to take place at the G20 summit in Argentina in late November, a Kremlin spokesman said.

Pence raised the issue of external meddling in the U.S. election but Putin told him that “the Russian state had nothing to do ... and can not have anything to do with meddling” in any electoral processes, Interfax quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.