Trump, Putin have lots to discuss at first meeting
White House says there is ‘no specific agenda,’ but ‘irritants’ could be solved
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s first face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday will be brimming with global intrigue, but the White House says there’s “no specific agenda.” So what are two of the world’s most famously unpredictable leaders to discuss?
Trump may be looking for concessions from Russia to show he’s delivering progress and helping restore a productive relationship between the two powers. Putin would almost surely want something in return, and there’s a long list of “irritants” they could potentially resolve.
Ahead of the meeting, White House National Security Council and State Department officials have been reviewing possible gestures the United States could offer Russia, a current and a former administration official said.
Yet any outward sign of bonhomie between Trump and Putin would be seized upon by the president’s critics and Russia hawks eager to show he’s cozying up to the Russian leader. The ongoing investigations into Russia’s interference in the U.S. election and potential Trump campaign collusion won’t be far from anyone’s minds.
The two leaders will sit down in Hamburg, Germany, on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit. Ahead of the meeting, Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak met Monday in Washington with the No. 3 U.S. diplomat, Thomas Shannon, to prepare.
A look at what Trump and Putin could address:
Trump has insisted there was no collusion with him or his campaign, a conclusion U.S. investigators have not yet reached.
U.S. officials says Russia tried to hack election systems in 21 states and sway the election for Trump, a level of interference that security experts say represents a top-level threat that should command a forceful response from the U.S. Putin has denied all this.
If Trump doesn’t raise Russia’s meddling at the meeting, it will fuel Trump’s critics, who say he’s ignoring a major national security threat. It could also embolden those who say Trump is trying to cover for the Russians after benefiting from their interference.
Each side has a long list of complaints that impede attempts to coordinate or cooperate on larger concerns. After meeting in Moscow earlier this year, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed to set up a mechanism to deal with these issues the Russians describe as “irritants” and the Americans call “the smalls.”
But that effort has stalled. After the Treasury last month imposed new sanctions on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine, Moscow called off a scheduled second meeting between Thomas Shannon, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, and Sergey Ryabkov, a Russian deputy foreign minister. That meeting has yet to be rescheduled.
It was not clear if either Trump or Putin would seek to reopen the channel, although Tillerson and other officials have stressed they remain open to that.
Russia has been vocal about its chief demand: the return of two properties it owns in the U.S. that were seized by the Obama administration as punishment for Russian meddling in the 2016 election. On Monday, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said if the U.S. doesn’t soon give back the compounds, Moscow will have no choice but to retaliate.
Another Russian demand is to ease surveillance of its diplomats in the U.S.
The U.S. list is topped by a resumption of adoptions of Russian children by American parents, which Russia banned in late 2012, an end to what it says is harassment of U.S. diplomats and other officials in Russia and a resolution to a dispute over a piece of land in St. Petersburg meant to be the site of a new U.S. consulate. The U.S. also wants expanded cultural and exchange programs. Such programs were vastly curtailed or ended after Putin’s 2012 return to the Kremlin in an election he accused Washington of interfering in.