The date chosen for the meeting was comfortable for Mr. Putin. After the NATO summit in Brussels and an official visit to London, Mr. Trump spent two days playing golf in Scotland before heading to Helsinki. No doubt the president enjoyed the free weekend, but Mr. Putin came away looking more important. While the American president was relaxing, Mr. Putin was finishing up business in Moscow, where he had assembled several heads of states and governments for the World Cup finals.

The venue also seemed to benefit the Russian side. The city discussed as a possible host for the summit was Vienna. It would have been approximately a three-hour flight away from both Scotland and Moscow, while Helsinki was at least an hour closer for Mr. Putin. This may sound like a small point but at symbolic international summits, such details matter.

And this summit was mostly about optics. Expectations for real policy deliverables were low on the Russian side. Although Mr. Trump is more popular in Moscow than in many capitals — especially in Europe — his erratic behavior and disregard for conventional diplomacy worry many people here, too.

The way Mr. Trump castigated American allies on the way to Helsinki and spoke with open admiration of his Russian counterpart also, of course, played into Mr. Putin’s hands. But when he tweeted hours before the summit that “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity,” it was a gift Moscow would not even have hoped for. No wonder the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reposted it with the words “we agree.”

Watching the joint news conference held by the two leaders, it was clear that Mr. Putin had the wind at his back. He made a far more confident impression than his American counterpart. In his opening statement, he articulated several concrete proposals — on arms control, terrorism, Syria and bilateral economic ties. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, devoted much of his initial statement to justifying his decision to meet with Mr. Putin in the first place.