WASHINGTON _ The White House and Kremlin announced Thursday that a long-anticipated summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will take place on July 16 in Helsinki, Finland.
"The two leaders will discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a brief statement.
A summit between the two leaders has been talked about since Trump's election. American intelligence agencies have accused Russia of having intervened in that campaign to boost Trump. A special counsel is investigating potential collusion with Trump's campaign, an issue that has hung ominously over his presidency.
Trump and Putin met briefly last year during an international conference in Hamburg, Germany but this will be their first full summit.
The Trump-Putin session will follow the U.S. president's meeting in Belgium with NATO partners, who have been worried that Trump has drifted away from traditional alliances in Europe while speaking warmly of Putin and praising his authoritarian rule. In between, Trump will visit Britain, another longtime ally that has seen its relationship chill during the Trump administration.
European partners and American critics are concerned that Trump will move closer to Putin, who is viewed as a major adversary by much of the Western European and American foreign policy establishment.
Trump, though he has imposed sanctions on Russia for its election meddling and other attempts to rattle the West, has maintained that the country could be a partner is solving problems in Syria, North Korea and other global hot spots.
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Yuri Ushakov, an aide to Putin, told reporters Wednesday that the format for the Trump-Putin meeting will include standard protocols: a tete-a-tete between the presidents and a joint news conference.
After the meeting, he said, the two presidents may adopt a joint statement "that could outline further steps on both sides in terms of improving bilateral relations, terms for joint actions in the international arena and terms for ensuring international stability and security," according to Tass, the Russian state news agency.
Tass said that the idea of the Trump-Putin summit first arose in a conversation between the two presidents in a March 20 phone call. The issue of the summit was then discussed through "closed channels," Tass reported, citing the Kremlin news service.
Trump's national security advisor, John Bolton, has been in Russia this week, negotiating the details of the summit.
The date would allow Putin to watch the finals of the World Cup, which his country is hosting, before meeting Trump.
(Special correspondent Sabra Ayres contributed to this article from Moscow.)
