Nothing is teed up

President Donald Trump's first face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week will be brimming with global intrigue. The White House has already commended that there's "no specific agenda set so far." In the absence of an outline, what will two of the world's most powerful leaders discuss?

G20 summit 2017

US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin will have an official meeting on Friday afternoon in Hamburg at the G20 summit. US National Security Adviser, HR McMaster, told reporters last week that the meeting would be unstructured. “There’s no specific agenda. It’s really going to be whatever the president wants to talk about.”

At last year’s G20 conference, Obama and Putin met informally in a “pull-aside” meeting, a signal that relations between the two countries needed to improve before an official meeting could be organized.

Analysis

Things Trump and Putin might address:

Syria

The main concern is ISIS & what can be done to curb the terrorism. Putin has been asking the U.S. to cooperate militarily with Russia in Syria, where both Moscow and Washington oppose the Islamic State group but disagree about Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Pentagon resisted proposals to work closely with Russia in Syria, out of concern the U.S. can't trust Moscow with sensitive intelligence information.

Interference in the US elections

They will probably discuss about the fall out of the Russian intervention in the elections

The Smalls

Each side has a long list of complaints about the other; that do not rise to the geopolitical level but are nonetheless impeding broader attempts to coordinate or cooperate on larger concerns. After meeting in Moscow earlier this year, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed to set up a mechanism to deal with these issues the Russians describe as "irritants" and the Americans call "the smalls."

Putin’s wish list

Putin’s wish list is clear. He wants the US to lift the sanctions imposed over its annexation of Crimea & give him a free hand in Syria

US demands

The United States might want to resolve the dispute over a piece of land in St. Petersburg that was meant to be the site of a new U.S. consulate in Russia's second-largest city.

The U.S. might also discuss about expanding the cultural and exchange programs between the two countries. Such programs were vastly curtailed after Putin's 2012 return to the Kremlin in an election he accused Washington of interfering in.

Ukraine Sanctions

Putin might ask for an easing of economic sanctions that the U.S. slapped on Russia. The sanction was over its actions in eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.

Assessment

Our assessment is that, both Trump and Putin sees the value of US and Russia working together to address the immediate threat that ISIS and Islamic extremist, pose to their countries. Both the leaders have a nationalist government and should demonstrate authoritarian leadership back to their people. Trump and Putin cannot lose face & we believe that the discussions will be a classic case of give and take. The US would not want Russia to get closer to China.