Trump to meet Putin alone at Helsinki summit
President Donald Trump will meet Vladimir Putin alone at their summit in Helsinki, a revelation sure to set nerves across Europe jangling over what possible concessions the US leader may offer.
John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, said the Trump-Putin summit on July 16 would be ‘‘just the two of them’’. Trump will seek Russia’s help to oust Iran from the Syrian battlefield, he said.
The possibility of Trump meeting the Russian president in private unsettled European allies even before it was confirmed. They are fretting over what promises Putin may extract, from US recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea to the withdrawal of American troops from Germany. Trump shocked South Korea and Japan when he promised Kim Jong-un during their solo meeting in Singapore that he would cancel US-South Korean exercises. The move was not discussed in preparatory sessions with his national security staff.
News of the solo meeting has unsettled Trump officials too. ‘‘Nobody knows what Trump will do once he’s in the room with Putin,’’ a senior official told CBS News. ‘‘This is on just about every issue.’’
Trump will meet Putin days after a Nato summit in Brussels at which the president is expected to tell allies to spend more money on defence. The transatlantic alliance is already stretched to breaking point amid a widening trade row and Trump’s repeated attacks on the European Union, which he called ‘‘as bad as China’’ on trade. He has directed trade officials to draft a bill that would allow the US to abandon its commitments to the World Trade Organisation, it has since emerged.
Last week it also emerged that Trump had encouraged President Emmanuel Macron to pull France out of the EU, dangling an enhanced trade deal as a reward. European leaders have said Trump is playing into Putin’s hands by undermining the Western alliance.