In the past few weeks alone, Trump has called for Russia to be readmitted to the Group of Seven industrial powers, suggested it has a legitimate claim to Crimea because a lot of Russian speakers live there and continued sowing doubts about whether Moscow meddled in the 2016 presidential election — or if it did, whether the sabotage actually benefited Hillary Clinton. In Singapore, Trump emerged from a lunch of sweet and sour crispy pork with Kim to declare he had solved the nuclear crisis with North Korea, even though the North conceded nothing on its weapons and missile programs. Trump also cancelled joint military exercises with South Korea, a concession long sought by Pyongyang. Donald Trump with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing in November. Credit:AP It has become a recurring motif for Trump as a statesman: in November, he lavished praise on Chinese President Xi Jinping after a one-on-one meeting in Beijing, during which Xi offered no concrete concession on trade — an issue that matters more to Trump than almost any other. What these three leaders have in common is that they are autocrats, whom Trump admires and believes he can win over with a brand of personal diplomacy that dispenses with briefing papers or talking points and relies instead on a combination of flattery, cajolery and improvisation.

"Trump sees a good meeting as a positive diplomatic achievement," said Michael McFaul, a former American ambassador to Moscow. "That's wrong. Good meetings are a means to an end." Given Russia's record of malfeasance — from its annexation of Crimea to its interference in the American election — McFaul said, "Trump should not praise Putin and signal a desire to just move on." "That does not serve American national interests," he said. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insists the Trump administration is tough on Russia. Credit:Bloomberg US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other officials insist that the Trump administration has been tougher on Russia than the Obama administration was. They cite US sanctions, arming of Ukrainian troops, expulsion of diplomats and vocal public shaming of Russia for its cyber attacks.

But even if that is true — and former Obama officials dispute it — Trump's steadfast refusal to criticise Putin has largely vitiated these measures. "What matters is what the President says," said Nicholas Burns, a diplomat who served in the Clinton and George W Bush administrations. "And what he's been saying completely undermines the policy. It's like he's untethered from his own administration." What they are ignoring is the music. Some of the lyrics are tough, but the music is a love song. Richard Haass, Council on Foreign Relations Even those who credit the President for taking steps that Obama did not, like sending lethal weapons to Ukraine, say those measures are largely lost in Trump's mystifying embrace of Putin. "The administration's staffers are focused on the lyrics," said Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. "What they are ignoring is the music. Some of the lyrics are tough, but the music is a love song."

US President Donald Trump meets briefly with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit in Hamburg last year. Credit:AP Trump argues that his personal relationships will ultimately yield results that have eluded his more conventional predecessors. In an interview with Fox News after the Singapore summit, he said that if he could have dinner with Putin, he could persuade him to withdraw from Syria and stop preying on Ukraine. "I could say: 'Would you do me a favour? Would you get out of Syria?'" Trump said. "'Would you do me a favour? Would you get out of the Ukraine?'" Pompeo, testifying on Wednesday before Congress, said Trump would raise the issue of Russia's election meddling with Putin. But the last time he did that, at a regional summit last fall in Asia, he told reporters that he believed that Putin's denials of Russian involvement were sincere. "Every time he sees me, he says, 'I didn't do that,' and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it," Trump said. "I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country."

McFaul predicted Putin would be a formidable counterpart in a one-on-one meeting, well briefed on American foreign policy and determined to use that knowledge to undermine the administration's policies, especially on Ukraine. A common thread in Trump's approach to autocrats, Haass said, is that he views these relationships as having no history, no baggage that constrains how these leaders may act. They are purely personal encounters, with none of the trade-offs or compromises that usually characterise summits. US President Bill Clinton, right, and his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin shake hands at the Helsinki Summit to discuss NATO expansion in 1997. Credit:AP Trump is not the first president to put a premium on building rapport with Russian leaders. Bill Clinton did it with Boris Yeltsin; Bush tried to do it with Putin; Barack Obama cultivated Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president between Putin's terms. But only Trump has made it virtually his entire agenda. That is not to say that he and Putin lack meaty issues to discuss. Some analysts speculated that Trump would look for common ground on Syria. During the transition, his aides had considered lifting sanctions on Russia in return for Russia's cooperation with the United States against Iran in Syria. The idea fell to the wayside, but some wonder whether the President could revive it.