Trump, Putin to use first meeting to address ‘critical mass of conflicts’

As Russia rejoiced over Donald Trump's election victory last November, some Moscow commentators predicted the new US president would pay Vladimir Putin the ultimate compliment of an immediate invitation to visit the White House.

But Mr Putin has waited nearly eight months for his first face-to-face encounter with President Trump, and the meeting on Friday afternoon will take place not in Washington, but on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg.

Trump, who spoke admiringly of Putin during the 2016 election campaign and advocated friendlier US-Russian ties, has not brought about the detente that optimists in Moscow once hoped for.

Plunged to new lows

Instead of improving, relations have plunged to new lows, with much of the political establishment in Washington enraged by allegations that Russia interfered in the US election to help Trump win the White House.

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Against this toxic backdrop, “nothing positive can be expected”, from Putin’s meeting with Trump, wrote Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine. “The important thing is that relations don’t get any worse.”

The Kremlin was scrambling this week to agree the format with the US for the Putin-Trump talks that, initially flagged as a brief "pull aside" chat on the sidelines of the G20 summit, was eventually presented by Dmitri Peskov, the Russian president's spokesman, as a "fully fledged, sit-down meeting".

Downplaying expectations, Peskov said the Russian and US leaders would use their first official encounter to establish a working dialogue essential to address the “critical mass of conflicts and problems that grows day by day”. Time for the talks will be limited as Putin has a packed schedule at the G20 gathering.

International terrorism

Russia's priority would be to discuss international terrorism – an area where the Kremlin and US have pledged to co-operate – as well as the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, said Yuri Ushakov, Putin's assistant. Arms control and strategic stability should also be on the agenda, given that Russia and the US were the world's two biggest nuclear powers, he added.

Moscow observers don’t expect progress on the major international issues souring relations – the US refusal to recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea, or the calls for regime change in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria.

North Korea is likely to be another sticking point, with Russia resisting US pressure to penalise Pyongyang for its escalating ballistic missile testing programme.

Ahead of the Putin-Trump meeting, Russia dangled the possibility of inviting US companies to develop Siberian oil fields. But with US sanctions blocking the transfer of specialised oil technology to Russia and the Senate in Washington planning even tougher penalties, Trump is unlikely to be able to give ground here.

Another dispute looming over the talks is the fate of two Russian embassy compounds in New York and Maryland which were confiscated during the last weeks of Barack Obama's administration in response to Moscow's alleged election meddling.

Putin decided against tit-for-tat action when Obama ordered the seizure of the properties and expelled 35 Russian diplomats, opting instead to wait and see whether relations improved under Trump. But Russian patience is now running out. Ushakov urged the US to hand back the compounds on Monday and free the Kremlin from the “need to take retaliatory action”.

Detente plan

It's not clear whether Trump, who slammed destabilising Russian behaviour in Europe in a speech in Poland on Thursday, has genuinely gone cold on Russia or whether the political situation in the US has made it impossible for him to move forward with his detente plan.

Observers in Moscow were clinging to the hope this week that, even if the Hamburg meeting yields no concrete policy results, Putin and Trump would at least strike up a personal relationship crucial to a more constructive engagement in future.

Both men go in for swaggering public displays of machismo and are likely, said Konstantin Remchukov, editor of the Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, to exchange "firm handshakes pulling and pushing each other up".

It was important to distinguish between Putin and Trump's desire to meet, talk and shake hands and the extremely strained relationship between their two countries, said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Moscow Carnegie Centre. "Trump is a friend. America is an enemy. For now the contradiction can't be resolved."