"Everyone’s preparing as if it’s Helsinki,” said a person familiar with the planning for a potential summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump. | Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty Images White House eyes Helsinki for Trump-Putin sitdown The Finnish capital would give Trump and Putin a backdrop loaded with historical significance for U.S.-Russia relations.

The White House is blocking off three days on the back end of President Donald Trump’s mid-July trip to the United Kingdom and Brussels, leaving room for a potential summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Plans for a potential sit-down are still being finalized, White House sources warned. But the current front-runner venue under consideration for the meeting, a source familiar with the planning said, is Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The location would offer Putin his desired neutral ground in a country close enough to Russia that he could return to Moscow in time for the final World Cup match on July 15.


While nothing final about a potential summit has been put in writing, “everyone’s preparing as if it’s Helsinki,” said a person familiar with the planning.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about the new front-runner location. Trump is scheduled to be in Brussels July 11-12 for a meeting of the NATO military alliance, before traveling to the U.K. for events on July 13.

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto’s country — officially neutral during the Cold War and not a NATO member — shares a border with Russia, and the president has nurtured a relationship with Putin. Like Trump, who defied the “do not congratulate” directions of his advisers to publicly applaud Putin on his reelection, Niinisto also went out of his way to congratulate him on his victory.

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Last year, Niinisto offered to host a one-on-one sit-down with Trump and Putin during a summit of Arctic nations in Finland. That meeting fell through.

Helsinki would also give Trump and Putin a backdrop loaded with historical significance for U.S.-Russia relations. President Gerald Ford traveled to the Finnish capital in 1975 to sign the Helsinki Accords in a bid to improve relations with the Soviet Union. And President George H.W. Bush met with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in Helsinki in 1990. The Trump administration was also considering Vienna for the summit, but recently the talk has shifted to Helsinki, the source familiar with the planning said.

National security adviser John Bolton is expected to be in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss a potential meeting's site.

Foreign policy experts downplayed the significance of the location or the dynamics of the meeting but said Finland could be well-suited because it would likely not add any diplomatic wrinkle to the meeting.

“The Finnish president is perfectly reasonable, with good relations with the Americans and the Russians,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a political research and consulting firm.

Bolton stopped first this week in London and Rome to consult with U.S. allies about the expected summit, which has European leaders concerned that Trump might offer unwelcome concessions to Putin.

"There are many topics that I’m sure President Trump and President Putin will discuss, and each of them is important to trying to put the relationship back in a place where there are a common set of understandings,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told CNN on Sunday. "The Russians, unlike the Europeans, don’t share our value set. It is a different conversation, but it is still a conversation that’s worth having."

Trump has been set on meeting with Putin since his Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, brushing away concern about the optics of a meeting while the special counsel's office continues its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

“There’s no stopping him,” a senior administration official told The New Yorker. “He’s going to do it. He wants to have a meeting with Putin, so he’s going to have a meeting with Putin.”