Against a backdrop of lime-painted walls and floor-to-ceiling windows framed by ornate gold curtains, National Security Adviser John Bolton exchanged a series of pleasantries with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bolton, a bullheaded advocate of American-style imperialism, has never shied from expressing his distaste for Putin’s leadership. But on Wednesday, as the two men stared each other down across a large white table in the Kremlin, Bolton was all diplomatic niceties. His new job, after all, requires him to help arrange Donald Trump’s playdates with the sorts of dictators Bolton traditionally spurned. “Even in earlier days, when our countries had differences, our leaders and their advisers met,” Bolton told the Russian autocrat, laying the groundwork for a Trump-Putin summit next month. “I think that was good for both countries, good for stability in the world, and President Trump feels very strongly on that subject.”

The American president feels strongly about other aspects of the U.S.-Russia relationship, too. He thinks that Moscow was unfairly punished for its invasion of Ukraine, and that the G7—which expelled Russia in 2014—should allow him back in. He has said that Putin’s alleged assassinations of journalists and political enemies should be placed in their proper historical context (“You think our country’s so innocent?”). He still resists the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, and he believes that if only he and Putin could be allowed to sit down and talk, he could end the Syrian crisis over dinner. He has repeatedly expressed frustration with the media, Democrats, and even members of his own party at having ratcheted up tensions with Russia, forcing him to impose sanctions that he sees as an impediment to global peace. Even with the specter of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation hanging over his head, Trump has never stopped craving a sit-down to iron out their differences and strike a grand deal.

“I think in the president’s mind this is long overdue and I think he blames some of his advisers—current and former—for not having allowed him to do this yet,” a Trump administration official familiar with past internal deliberations about the summit told me. “He made it clear that he thought that the problem wasn’t necessarily the relations between the two countries, it was more the fact that you had two top leaders who actually controlled everything, and they are the ones who need to talk, and if you leave it to their underlings then they are just not going to get the job done.” Trump has been frustrated by aides and intelligence experts who have warned him against cozier relations with Putin, the official suggested, and is eager to shake things up the way he did with Kim Jong Un. “He thinks that together they will be able to get through the clutter of the ‘deep state,’ as he calls it, and actually get things done.”

While Trump has been salivating over a bromance with Putin, however, European leaders are deeply concerned that the meeting will further undermine NATO’s efforts to contain Russian aggression. The timing makes it feel even more like a thumb in the eye to America’s closest allies. According to sources familiar with the planning, the Trump-Putin summit is expected to take place on July 15—likely in either Vienna or Helsinki—just days after the two-day NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium. Diplomats fear that the back-to-back meetings portend a repeat of the optics surrounding the G7 summit earlier this month, when Trump lashed out at allies like Canada, Germany, and France, and then went running straight into the arms of Kim Jong Un in Singapore. “One can’t escape the sense that the Helsinki meeting is somehow intended to play a similar role to the Singapore meeting,” a former senior U.S. official told me. “Just as his meeting with Kim took Trump beyond a fractious G7 summit, a meeting with Putin could take him beyond a potentially fractious NATO summit.” (Update: On Thursday morning, the date for the summit was announced as July 16.)