Trump, Putin to meet in Helsinki on July 16

US president Donald Trump and his counterpart Vladimir Putin will meet in Helsinki on July 16, the Kremlin and the White House have announced.

The agenda is likely to include arms control and other security issues, although both sides have already played down the potential outcome of the meeting.

“I think a lot of good things can come from meetings with people,” Trump said in Washington on Wednesday. “Maybe something positive will come out of it.”

This is just the third time the two leaders have met face to face.

According to commentators, the encounter is likely to generate controversy in the US, where many politicians have questioned Trump’s motivations behind setting a meeting with a power accused of meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.

On Thursday, Trump sent out a tweet questioning the conclusion of the US intelligence agencies that Russia had played a role involved in the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails during the election.

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Trump and Putin have met twice already, after the Hamburg G7 meeting in 2017, as well as at a leaders’ summit in Vietnam in November.

Trump made history on June 12 when he and North Korean leader Jim Jong Un met in Singapore. The meeting represented a diplomatic breakthrough with Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program after decades of hostility.