WASHINGTON — President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet on July 16 in Helsinki, Finland, both of their governments announced Thursday.

The meeting, planned in recent days, signals a growing rapprochement between the United States and Russia. Both men have pursued the tete-a-tete in hopes of soothing tensions over Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere, despite retaliatory actions taken by both governments this year.

“The two leaders will discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

Finland, officially neutral during the Cold War and not a NATO member, shares a border with Russia, and its president, Sauli Niinisto, has fostered a relationship with Putin.

The date falls after previously planned stops during a trip to Europe by Trump for a NATO summit meeting July 11-12 in Brussels and a visit to Britain on July 13. It also allows Putin to be in Moscow for the World Cup final on July 15.

Trump plans to fly to Helsinki after a weekend of golf in Scotland, officials said. Trump owns two golf courses in Scotland. The Guardian newspaper reported last month that he planned to play in Scotland with a professional golfer, or possibly a member of the royal family.

Plans for the Trump-Putin summit were finalized on Wednesday by national security adviser John Bolton, who held marathon meetings in Moscow that included talks with Putin himself at the Kremlin.

Trump has long sought to cultivate a warm friendship with his Russian counterpart as a means to solving intractable problems around the world, and he has said he admires the strength of Putin’s authoritarian rule.

Shortly before the announcement, Trump took to Twitter, relaying that Russia continues to deny interfering in the 2016 election and to repeat previously aired complaints about former FBI director James Comey and Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election! Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t Shady James Comey and the now disgraced FBI agents take and closely examine it? Why isn’t Hillary/Russia being looked at? So many questions, so much corruption!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2018

“Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Trump wrote. “Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t Shady James Comey and the now disgraced FBI agents take and closely examine it? Why isn’t Hillary/Russia being looked at? So many questions, so much corruption!”

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “I’m confident that when the president meets with Vladimir Putin he will make clear that meddling in our elections is completely unacceptable.”

Trump’s summit with Putin threatens to further rupture his relationship with European leaders and is likely to raise additional doubts about his commitment to the United States’ traditional alliances. It will also garner scrutiny in light of special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russia’s election interference and possible collusion between Putin’s government and Trump’s campaign.

NATO leaders had expressed concerns about a Trump-Putin meeting taking place either before or after their planned summit.

One senior European diplomat, in a recent conversation, halted mid-sentence to muse about whether it was worse for the two to meet before the NATO summit – when many alliance leaders fear the U.S. president might make big concessions to Putin without input from them – or after, when they would be unable to mop up a mess.

Both options are bad, concluded the diplomat, who spoke about the summit on the condition of anonymity in advance of the NATO gathering.

The Post’s Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

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