“We hope that this meeting will allow frank and direct exchanges”, explained an official of the American executive.

For the White House, a “solo” press conference is “the appropriate format” to clearly present the topics that have been raised, both on possible convergences and on topics on which the United States has “de real concerns ”.

The US executive specified that the meeting would include a working session and a session in a smaller format, without further details on the latter.

Ukraine, Belarus, fate of the imprisoned Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny, cyberattacks: the discussions promise to be bitter and difficult. The White House has been hammering for several weeks that it has the objective of making relations between the two countries more “stable and predictable”.

The joint press conference that followed the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July 2018 is still in everyone’s minds in Washington.

In a strange exercise, which had sparked an uproar even within his camp, the Republican president seemed to place more value on the words of the former KGB strongman than on the unanimous conclusions of the American intelligence agencies on the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.