No 'specific agenda,' but Trump, Putin have lots to discuss

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's first face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday will be brimming with global intrigue, but the White House said there's "no specific agenda."

The two leaders will sit down in Hamburg, Germany, on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit of leading rich and developing nations.

A look at what Trump and Putin could address:

Election hacking

Trump has been reluctant to acknowledge Russia's role in meddling in the U.S. election, out of apparent concern it undermines the legitimacy of his win. He also has insisted there was no collusion with him or his campaign, a conclusion U.S. investigators have not reached.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks June 2 in St. Petersburg, Russia.Dmitry Lovetsky ~ Associated Press

U.S. officials said Russia tried to hack election systems in 21 states to sway the election for Trump, a level of interference in the U.S. political system security experts said represents a top-level threat that should command a forceful response from the U.S. Putin has denied all this.

There are no indications Trump plans to raise Russia's meddling at the meeting. But if he doesn't, it will give fuel to Trump's critics who say he's ignoring a major national-security threat. It could embolden those who say Trump is trying to cover for the Russians after benefiting from them.

Irritants

Each side has a list of complaints about the other that do not rise to the geopolitical level but are 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."

But even that has stalled. After the Treasury last month imposed new sanctions on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine, Moscow called off a scheduled second meeting between Thomas Shannon, the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, and Sergey Ryabkov, a Russian deputy foreign minister. Shannon and Ryabkov's canceled June 23 meeting in St. Petersburg has not been rescheduled.

It was not clear whether Trump or Putin would seek to reopen the channel when they see each other in Hamburg, although Tillerson and other State Department officials have taken pains to stress they remain open to a resumption of the talks.

Russia wish list

Russia has been vocal about its chief demand: the return of two properties it owns in the U.S. that were seized by the Obama administration as punishment for Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The recreational compounds are in Oyster Bay, New York, on Long Island, and along the Corsica River in the Eastern Shore region of Maryland.

On Monday, Putin's foreign-affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Russia had been restrained by declining to retaliate, but its patience was running out. If the U.S. doesn't soon give back the compounds, also known as dachas, Moscow will have no choice but to retaliate, Ushakov said.

Another Russian demand is to ease surveillance of its diplomats in the U.S.

U.S. demands

The U.S. has its own list, topped by a resumption of adoptions of Russian children by American parents which Russia banned in late 2012; an end to what it says is harassment of U.S. diplomats and other officials in Russia; and a resolution to a 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. also wants expanded cultural and exchange programs between the two countries.

Such programs were curtailed or ended after Putin's 2012 return to the Kremlin in an election he accused Washington of interference.

Tillerson has made the adoption issue a priority, according to aides, although it remains unclear whether he has succeeded in convincing the Russians even to consider revisiting the ban.

The property dispute in St. Petersburg dates to 2014 when Russia blocked the U.S. from developing the site after the Obama administration hit Russia with sanctions because of it's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region.

Officials say the U.S. won't simply swap the Russian compounds for the St. Petersburg consulate. Action on the other demands is also required, they say.

Moscow has long sought an easing of economic sanctions the U.S. slapped on Russia over its actions in eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, which the U.S. does not recognize. Though there were indications that Trump's aides entertained easing the sanctions in the run-up to the inauguration and early days of his presidency, his administration has repeatedly insisted that they will stay in place until Russia pulls out of Crimea and lives up to its commitments under a cease-fire deal for eastern Ukraine that has never been fully implemented.

Given that Russia has taken neither of those steps, easing sanctions would require a major reversal by Trump and would infuriate Russia hawks in both parties in the U.S. In fact, Congress has been pushing to increase sanctions on Russia and make them harder for Trump to lift. The Senate has passed the popular measure, which won't go to a House vote before Trump's meeting with Putin.

Eager to bolster his global legitimacy, Putin has been pressing 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. Though defense laws passed in the wake of the Ukraine crisis bar the U.S. military from cooperating with Russia, the two have maintained a "deconfliction" hotline to ensure their forces don't accidentally collide on the crowded Syrian battlefield.

The Pentagon has steadfastly resisted proposals to work closely with Russia in Syria, out of concern the U.S. can't trust Moscow with sensitive intelligence information. But the problems posed by the lack of coordination in Syria have resurfaced following recent events. The U.S. has recently shot down several pro-Syrian government aircraft, leading Russia, an ally of the Syrian government, to threaten to shoot down any aircraft that flies west of the Euphrates River.