RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin may meet next month in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, a US official said on Tuesday [6-26-18]. The Scandinavian city has emerged as a strong possibility to host the summit, which Trump has pressed aides to organize after he raised the idea during a congratulatory phone call with Putin in March. Trump is expected to meet Putin at the end of a July trip to Europe, where he’ll attend a NATO summit in Brussels and make a long-delayed visit to the United Kingdom. Neither the White House nor the Kremlin has officially announced a meeting. Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton is traveling to Moscow this week to help arrange the meeting. The Austrian capital Vienna had been previously mentioned as a venue for the summit, though the US official suggested that option had now been largely ruled out. Trump and Putin last greeted each other in person on the sidelines of a leaders’ summit in Vietnam in November. That followed a formal sit-down meeting in Hamburg during last year’s G20 summit. Trump has sought better relations with Russia, even as US investigations probe Moscow’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.”
-Kevin Liptak, “Helsinki eyed for potential Trump-Putin meeting,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, June 26, 2018 4:18 pm