Trump lobbied on nuclear weapons by Putin at Helsinki summit, leaked document reveals

Topics the pair negotiated during their private summit in Helsinki, Finland on July 16 included the Russian president’s willingness to extend a series of landmark nuclear treaties and pursue new weapons limits, according to the leaked document.

Such issues have been discussed between US and Russian leaders for decade, but they have since been overshadowed by an array of controversies including Syria, Ukraine and claims of Russia’s meddling in Mr Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

Details in the single page agenda for the meeting shows Mr Putin remains interested in maintaining continued cooperation with the US on nuclear weapons.

A source who did not wish to be identified after obtaining the page translated from Russian into English by Politico, said: “This is, ‘We want to get out of the dog house and engage with the US on a broad range of security issues’.”

The meeting last month was also attended by the Russian Foreign Ministry and a US delegation led by Thomas Pickering, former Undersecretary of State.

At the time, uncertainty about what Mr Trump and Mr Putin discussed during the private meeting in which members of the press were also banished from caused a stir.

The document fails to address questions raised about what the Russian government meant last month when it said “cooperation in Syria” would be discussed between the two presidents and what they agreed to as a result.

Further murkiness fanned the flames of suspicion after Dan Coats, US Director of National Intelligence, told reporters he was “not in a position to either understand fully or talk about what happened in Helsinki”.

But it does at the very least provide detail on themes and an insight into the atmosphere of the summit.

Among the list of priorities was Mr Putin’s interest in extending a nuclear reduction treaty brought about during the Obama administration.

Mr Putin said at the time: “We submitted to our American colleagues a note with a number of specific suggestions.”

The White House again refused to answer questions about what was taken about during the summit but would neither confirm or deny the validity of the document.