That tete-a-tete in Helsinki between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will be followed by an extended bilateral meeting and then a working lunch. | Jorge Silva/AFP/Getty Images White House says Trump to meet Putin one-on-one 'Of greatest concern is that the President seems to believe that Putin is susceptible to some sort of charm offensive,' says a former Obama national security adviser.

President Donald Trump will initially meet one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this month, senior administration officials said Thursday, a risky approach to dealing with the experienced Russian leader driven by Trump himself.

"The president has determined that now is the time for direct communication,” a senior administration official told reporters on a conference call when asked why Trump is not including top foreign policy advisers in the discussion.


That tete-a-tete in Helsinki will be followed by an extended bilateral meeting and then a working lunch, both of which will be attended by senior U.S. and Russian officials, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman said on the call.

The day of conversations with Putin is expected to focus on several issues, including arms control, Ukraine, Syria and Russian election meddling, the official said. It will be the first dedicated meeting between the two presidents, who have spoken by phone and on the sidelines of two gatherings of world leaders last year.

But the official downplayed the prospect of concrete agreements, stressing that the summit’s main achievement will be its very existence. “We haven’t had across-the-table conversations about things like election meddling and malign activity that really do need to take place,” the senior administration official said. “You can’t solve problems if you’re not willing to talk about them.”

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The official added: “The fact that we're having a summit at this level is a deliverable in itself. I don't exclude there will be some concrete agreement coming out on the other end of the summit. There are a lot of issues to be discussed.”

Putin, in contrast, is expected to arrive in Finland with a much clearer set of objectives: further dividing the U.S. from Europe, for instance, escaping sanctions imposed over his ongoing aggression in Ukraine, and gaining a freer hand to operate in Syria.

That imbalance of objectives and preparation is making foreign policy experts anxious about the meeting.

So does the wide gap in diplomatic experience between Trump and Putin.

In North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un, Trump confronted a young leader eager to impress on the world stage, a man who looked tickled by the attention and camera flashes that greeted him in Singapore last month.

Putin has negotiated directly with four American presidents over nearly 20 years.

“This is not a summit that should happen at this time,” warned Tom Donilon, a former national security adviser to President Barack Obama. “Putin has almost defiantly done nothing to earn such a meeting. And none of the requisites are in place. You want a clear set of goals and to have consulted closely with allies on those goals, you want to have allied unity going into such a meeting, and you want to have a solid understanding of who you are dealing with and a real understanding of the history of the relationship.”

“Putin will have mastered his brief on every issue and under no circumstances should President Trump be advised to do the meeting in a truly one-on-one setting,“ Donilon added.

For a president who prides himself on relying on personal charm instead of briefing books, it’s a high risk gambit to take on a former KGB officer skilled in manipulation.

Experts say the risk is heightened by the fact that Trump will be coming from a gathering of Western leaders at the NATO Summit in Brussels a few days earlier. Daniel Fried, a former senior diplomat and harsh Putin critic, said that if Trump clashes with NATO allies much as he did with leaders at last month’s G-7 summit in Canada, the president will arrive in Finland even more susceptible to Putin’s will.

“The worst-case scenario is that Putin charms him, and he starts trashing the Western alliance, trashing American values,” Fried said. “I don’t think that’s likely, but it’s in the range of possible outcomes. I say that without pride or pleasure.”

Fried, who has studied U.S.-Russia summits, wrote recently that “personal chemistry between leaders can help at the margins, but will not compensate for incompatible strategic interests; assuming otherwise may lead to major problems.”

“Of greatest concern is that the president seems to believe that Putin is susceptible to some sort of charm offensive,” Donilon said. “That is not correct. Putin is an intelligence officer with nearly 20 years of experience in leading Russia. It is all about hard, cold national interests.”

Another question mark before the Putin meeting is how Trump might address Russia’s 2016 election meddling, which continues to be a subject of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on whether Russia did interfere, despite the unanimous consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies to that effect. But the president did confront Putin on the subject during a meeting with the Russian at the G-20 summit in Hamburg last July. Trump said afterward that he had “strongly pressed” Putin on the subject, received firm denials, and concluded it was “time to move forward.”

In the Monday conference call, the Trump official called Russia’s election meddling a “malign activity” but would not predict whether Trump will echo that hard-line language.

“He knows the facts and details,” the official said. “We all talk about it a little different, the president will talk about it in his own way.”