White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the summit would amount to a 'listening session' for President Trump on the Russian leader's interest in peace.

President Donald Trump has often bragged about his warm relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But in the months leading up to the leaders’ first meeting in six years, Trump began asking Europeans and White House aides what’s changed about his counterpart.

When U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Helsinki in 2018, the pair alarmed allies with a friendly encounter where Trump sided with the Russian leader over his own intelligence agencies on election interference.