The surrealist history of private meetings of Trump and Putin

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have a story of bizarre encounters.

There was the couple’s first meeting in Germany when Trump confiscated the notes of his interpreter to hide all proof of what had happened in the room. Time in Vietnam when Trump insisted on the nominal value that Moscow did not get involved in the 2016 elections. And their summit in Helsinki when Trump questioned his own intelligence services given the Fort Deni de Putin.

Now, while the two leaders are preparing for their first face -to -face meeting since Trump returned to the White House, political decision -makers and analysts are preparing for an unconventional meeting that will present a less congested Trump than in his first mandate.

Many fear that if these previous meetings are an indication, it is Putin, the experienced KGB operator who has become Strongman, who will gain the upper hand – and not the reverse.

“There is no way to pass without progress to a summit that ends the war in less than a week,” said Samuel Charap, the main political scientist of the Rand Corporation. “But Trump has this eternal belief in his own charisma and his ability to persuade his counterparts in what he thinks is logical and just.”

Former French president François Hollande, who, in 2015, co-directed peace negotiations with the German Chancellor of the Angela Merkel and Putin era on Ukraine, has a warning for the American president: “Putin technique is a professional lie.”

“Trump would be clear to show that he has detailed knowledge of the situation on the ground,” Hollande Times told Hollande.

When Trump and Putin met for the first time, in July 2017, the American chief was increased by the investigation into the alleged Russian elections mixing and mutual distrust between Trump and his own advisers in foreign policy.

The two presidents huddled on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Hamburg, joined by the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Secretary of State of Trump and two performers. Trump then took the notes of his interpreter and asked the interpreter not to inform anyone about the content of the meeting.

Then during a dinner that evening, Trump approached Putin for one against one – with an interpreter from Putin and no American official.

At their next meeting at the Economic Cooperation Forum in Asia-Pacific in Vietnam in November, Trump reiterated Putin’s claims that Russia had not interfered in the US elections.

The two had another meeting opposite Helsinki in July 2018 where they were only joined by their respective performers. When he was asked at a press conference if he believed his own intelligence agencies or the Russian president, Trump said that he had trusted the two but noted: “President Putin says that it is not Russia. I see no reason why it would be.”

The two men met again, informally, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires later that year, where Trump took any new interpreter or notes with him.

The summit of this week represents the last chance for Trump to again refound his relationship with Putin and to take a more severe position on the Russian president. Few expect it to take it.

“Putin will try to convince Trump that the position (Russian) is better than it is. Although for Trump, it is much more important to conclude this agreement and claim his new peacekeeping victory,” said Kirill Rogov, sociologist and stock market visiting the Institute of Human Scientists in Vienna. “It ends with nothing, but Trump avoids the need to take decisive measures.”

Hollande, who spent 17 hours in the capital of Bélarus in February 2015 to seal the so-called Minsk 2 agreement on a cease-fire in the eastern Donbas Ukrainian, said Putin would likely play for time.

“He is not in a hurry,” said the former French president. “He knows he will always be in power in a month, two years, perhaps until the end of his life. Trump is in a hurry because he is committed to resolving all the conflicts in the world and wants results.”

Long digressions were also a reason, Holland recalled. “Putin will start the meeting by telling the whole story. It could last an hour, longer, if you do not cut it. The Russian negotiation method is that it should last a long time but that nothing happens,” he said.

“But in the end, he would always offer an opening – a mediation, another meeting, a working group – so that the other side can say, see, Putin has changed a little.”

The plain lies set out were also one of the Russian leader’s tips, Holland said. For example, Putin insisted that he had no contact with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, despite funding and supporting them militarily. “It was such a big lie that it was impressive,” said Hollande.

A German diplomat involved in Minsk’s negotiations described Putin as “one of the most qualified negotiators”. “He knows all the subjects, the legal reasoning in detail, but always manipulates the facts. You must know your facts as well as. “”

But the facts are not Trump’s strong, he said. In early 2017, Merkel organized an appeal to the American president to explain how Putin refused to implement the Minsk agreement. Trump just said thank you and hung up. Later, the US advisers told the Merkel team that Trump was furious because she had lectured him. “Not only does he not like the facts, but he also has his prejudices, and Putin knows it,” said the diplomat.

In her memoirs, Merkel writes that she and Trump “spoke at two different levels: Trump on the emotional; I on the bill ”.

Putin has a “very structured and very meticulous bad faith,” said a former French adviser to the Holland negotiation team. When the Russian chief refused to accept any external surveillance from the Ukrainian-Russian border, he “said he had not been raped,” said the councilor. “But of course, it is because the Russians crossed it whenever they liked.”

From the Alaska meeting, the advisor said: “The Russians will not conclude an agreement. Putin just needs Trump to stop supporting Ukraine, which is Trump’s natural inclination anyway.”

Rogov, the sociologist, said that Putin could be interested in negotiations more than before, because the Russian summer offensive in Ukraine was less successful than last year. The prospect of frightening Trump as an oil client with the threat of prices has twisted Putin’s arm, he added.

Compared to his first administration, when Trump was forced by an assertive congress and by officials who sought to place railings on his relationship with Putin, the American president is now faced with fewer checks on his power. Republican legislators are intimidated and the foreign policy has been sidelined.

“It is not forced,” said a senior American official, who spoke under the guise of anonymity.

Trump and Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, led the operation as two “office hands,” said Andrew Weiss, vice-president of the Endowment for International Peace.

“We now have Trump without railing or counterweight in his own administration seated with Putin, who has been in this position for a decade of not having peers in his own proximity,” said Weiss.