G20 meeting of two presidents could see Russia regain access to diplomatic compounds blocked after interference in 2016 US election, say former officials 
 
 Donald Trump has told White House aides to come up with possible concessions to offer as bargaining chips in his planned meeting next week with Vladimir Putin, according to two former officials familiar with the preparations. 
 
 Ex-Trump adviser says FBI interviewed him about Russia investigation Read more 
 
 National security council staff have been tasked with proposing “deliverables” for the first Trump-Putin encounter, including the return of two diplomatic compounds Russians were ordered to vacate by the Obama administration in response to Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election, the former officials said. It is not clear what Putin would be asked to give in return. 
 
 There is strong resistance in the NSC and state department to one-sided concessions aimed simply at improving the tone of US-Russian relations. There is also opposition within the administration to Trump’s preference for a formal bilateral meeting with Putin at the G20 summit in Germany, as first reported by the Associated Press. 
 
 Some officials argue the meeting should be a brief and informal “pull-aside” at the two-day summit, which starts next Friday in Hamburg, in view of the fact that Trump is under multi-pronged investigations into his campaign’s relationship with Moscow. The sceptics also argue there has been no let-up in Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, which was the trigger for the bulk of the sanctions. 
 
 The NSC spokesman, Michael Anton, said the meeting between the two leaders “is not set in any format yet”, but he did not respond to a question about the request to NSC staff to propose potential bargaining chips for the meeting. 
 
 “They have been asked for deliverables, but there is resistance to offering anything up without anything back in return,” said one former official familiar with the debate inside the White House. 
 
 
 
 One possible gesture under consideration is the restoration of access to two diplomatic compounds, in Maryland and New York, from which Russian officials were ejected by the Obama administration in December as part of a package of punitive measures for Russian hacking of the 2016 elections. 
 
 Obama said the compounds were “used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes”. He also expelled 35 Russian officials he described as “intelligence operatives”. 
 
 The Trump administration was contemplating handing back the compounds in early May, initially in exchange for the Russian government lifting a freeze on construction of a new US consulate in St Petersburg, according to the Washington Post. That link was reportedly dropped a few days later when the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, met his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Washington on 10 May. 
 
 When he took the job, Tillerson backed moves to improve relations with Moscow and arranged for Lavrov to meet Trump in the Oval Office. But a former official said the former oil executive felt “burned” by that incident, of which the Russian government published photographs without the US administration’s permission, and where Trump disclosed classified information about counter-terrorist operations. Tillerson has since become more adamant in his opposition to the relaxation of sanctions without substantial changes to Russian behaviour. 
 
 Sergey Lavrov's White House visit reveals little about Trump and Russia Read more 
 
 So far, however, no agreements have been reached on the fate of the compounds, which Russian diplomats have made a priority in their discussions with the administration. 
 
 On Wednesday, the Russian foreign ministry said “retaliatory measures” were being prepared for closure of the compounds, but did not describe the measures. 
 
 The Russian Kommersant newspaper has reported that the Kremlin could seize US diplomatic property in Russia or impose restrictions on an Anglo-American school there. 
 
 Asked on Wednesday about a Trump-Putin meeting in Hamburg, Lavrov told journalists: “We assume that contact will take place, as the two presidents will at the same time be in one town, in one building, in one room.” 
 
 Trump made significant efforts to lift sanctions on Russia in his first weeks in office but was thwarted by resistance from allies as well as from former Obama officials and state department staffers. 
 
 When Theresa May visited the White House a week after Trump’s inauguration, one of her priorities was to dissuade the new president from relaxing sanctions imposed on Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea and covert military intervention in eastern Ukraine. 
 
 “The Brits did push for that, but it’s hard to say how much difference their intervention made,” said a former official, who was working at the state department at the time. 
 
 Two outgoing state officials, Daniel Fried and Tom Malinowski, lobbied Congress to pass legislation to codify the sanctions and lock them in place. Their intervention was first reported by Yahoo News. 
 
 On 14 June the Senate passed a bill, with a 98-2 vote, that would strengthen sanctions on Russia and require congressional approval for any administration attempt to roll them back. The bill has since been stalled in the House over technicalities amid reports that Trump’s allies are seeking to water it down. 
 
 “If the bill is passed it would mean that in one important respect, Russian active measures will have failed,” Malinowski, Obama’s assistant secretary of state for human rights, said. He also pointed to the Treasury’s move last week to broaden existing restrictions on Russia as an indication “the sanctions machinery is working normally and on schedule”. 
 
 Russia and Trump: the chronicle of a scandal Read more 
 
 Evelyn Farkas, who was deputy assistant secretary of state in the defence department for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, said the closure of the Russian compounds and the expulsion of suspected spies were intended to be only the first step in the punitive measures against Moscow for its election meddling. 
 
 “If President Trump starts to undo any of those measures, including giving back the facilities in Maryland and New York then the Russian government will believe … they got away with what they did to us and believe me, they’ll try it again,” Farkas said. “Putin himself uses that phrase all the time: ‘With the eating grows the appetite’.” 
 
 With Congress and most of his administration set against concessions to Russia, Trump has been hemmed in so far in his overtures to Moscow. His encounter with Putin next week, however, will offer him the opportunity to remake policy on the spot. 
 
 “The big wild card in all this is the person holding the position of president of the United States,” Malinowski said. “We don’t know what he will say when he meets the master-manipulator from the Kremlin.” ||||| President Donald Trump is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin during a G20 summit next week in Germany. | Getty Images Trump to meet Putin on sidelines of G20 gathering next week 
 
 President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a G20 summit next week in Germany, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said on Thursday. 
 
 Trump and Putin will speak on the sidelines of the gathering, McMaster told reporters, rather than a more formal separate meeting. Speculation had mounted over whether the two would meet when both are in Hamburg, Germany. Trump has been criticized since his presidential campaign for comments of the Russian leader that seemed too flattering. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 McMaster said there was no "specific agenda" for the meeting. ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week at a summit in Germany that brings two world leaders whose political fortunes have become intertwined face-to-face for the first time. 
 
 FILE PHOTO: A combination of file photos showing Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, January 15, 2016 and U.S. President Donald Trump posing for a photo in New York City, U.S., May 17, 2016. REUTERS/Ivan Sekretarev/Pool/Lucas Jackson/File Photos 
 
 Both the Kremlin and the White House announced on Thursday that the pair will meet on the sidelines of the July 7-8 summit of G20 nations in Hamburg. 
 
 Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster downplayed the significance of the meeting, one of nine such side meetings for the U.S. president over two days. 
 
 “It won’t be different from our discussions with any other country, really,” McMaster said. 
 
 “There’s no specific agenda. It’s really going to be whatever the president wants to talk about.” 
 
 The meeting will be fraught with difficulties for Trump. 
 
 Allegations that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election last year and colluded with the Republican’s campaign have overshadowed the businessman’s unexpected victory and dogged his first five months in office. 
 
 Russia and the United States are also at odds over Ukraine, NATO expansion and the civil war in Syria where Moscow supports President Bashar al-Assad. 
 
 The United States backs rebel groups trying to overthrow Assad, and Washington angered Russia by launching missile strikes against a Syrian government air base in April in response to what the United States says was a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians. 
 
 INVESTIGATION LOOMS 
 
 Trump has frequently called for better ties with Russia but lawmakers in his own Republican Party are urging him to be wary of Moscow. 
 
 “As the president has made clear, he’d like the United States and the entire West to develop a more constructive relationship with Russia but he has also made clear that we will do what is necessary to confront Russia’s destabilizing behavior,” McMaster said. 
 
 U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia hacked and leaked emails of Democratic Party political groups to help Trump win the 2016 U.S. presidential election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Russia denies the allegations and Trump says his team did not collude with Moscow. 
 
 Several congressional committees as well as the FBI are investigating Russia’s role in the election and any alleged collusion by Trump’s campaign. 
 
 That makes the optics of the Putin meeting particularly challenging for Trump. 
 
 “If there are big grins on both of their faces, that will be the picture on the front pages of every Western newspaper, as the investigation continues here,” said Heather Conley, a former State Department official in the George W. Bush White House. 
 
 “I would think the president would be advised, if there is a meeting, to be very careful with his body language,” Conley told Reuters. 
 
 SYRIA FRICTION 
 
 Trump raised Russian hackles this week when the White House said it appeared the Syrian military was preparing to conduct a chemical weapons attack and warned that Assad and his forces would “pay a heavy price” if it did so. 
 
 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Wednesday that Moscow would respond proportionately if the United States took measures against Syrian government forces. 
 
 But Lavrov added that it would “probably not be right” if Putin and Trump did not talk at the G20 summit of world economic powers. 
 
 Republican Bob Corker, the influential chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, described the planned encounter as “just a side meeting” but said he hoped Trump would bring up problematic issues with Putin. 
 
 “I would hope what he would do is hand him a list of the issues we have with their country. And I think he may well do that,” Corker told Reuters. 
 
 Putin, who has served as both Russian president and prime minister, has outlasted the previous two U.S. presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. 
 
 Officials from those administrations say American officials initially overestimated their potential areas of cooperation with the Russian leader. Then, through a combination of overconfidence, inattention and occasional clumsiness, Washington contributed to a deep spiral in relations with Moscow, they say. 
 
 Those relations reached a post-Cold War low under Trump’s predecessor, Obama. 
 
 In the last days of his presidency, Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian suspected spies and imposed sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies over their involvement in hacking U.S. political groups in the 2016 election. 
 
 A proposed new package of sanctions on Russia in the U.S. Congress might also put curbs on Trump’s ability to pursue warmer relations with Moscow. 
 
 The U.S. Senate reached an agreement on Thursday to resolve a technical issue stalling the sanctions, although the measure’s fate in the House of Representatives is uncertain.
– Donald Trump will have his first face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin as president during next week's G20 summit in Germany, Politico reports. The meeting—which won't be formal but rather happen "on the sidelines"—was announced by national security adviser HR McMaster on Thursday. He says no "specific agenda" has been set for the meeting. Putin and Trump likely won't have trouble finding things to talk about. Reuters notes the US and Russia are currently at odds over NATO expansion, Russian action in Ukraine, and the Syrian civil war. Not to mention Russia's alleged involvement and collusion in the 2016 presidential election. Two former officials tell the Guardian that Trump has asked National Security Council staff for "deliverables" he can bring to Putin during their meeting. Such concessions could include returning two diplomatic compounds in the US to Russia or lessening sanctions. It's unclear what the US would get in return for the concessions, and both the NSC and State Department are said to be against giving Putin anything simply to improve relations. "As the president has made clear, he'd like the United States and the entire West to develop a more constructive relationship with Russia, but he has also made clear that we will do what is necessary to confront Russia's destabilizing behavior," Reuters quotes McMaster as saying Thursday.