Trump and Putin: A study in contrasts

US President Donald Trump meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finnish capital Helsinki on Monday to discuss Syria, Iran, election meddling and Ukraine among others.

It’s the first official meeting between the two who are poles apart, in terms of temperament and style.
* Putin’s ‘working-class family from Leningrad’ background versus Trump — the fourth of five children born to a wealthy New York real estate developer.

* Trump saw his business empire burgeon in the 80s. Putin, a KGB agent at the time, watched the Soviet Union disintegrate from Dresden (in East Germany), where he was posted.

* While Trump’s family are at the core of his personal brand, the divorced Putin shields his privacy fiercely—his two daughters have almost never been photographed in public.

* While every aspect of Trump’s life—from his rise as a businessman to reality TV star—has been broadcast, little is known about Putin. That would be his rise through officialdom before Boris Yeltsin handed him the presidency, and the crumbs he’s fed Russian journalist over the years.

* While Trump is often labelled a loose cannon, who angrily contradicts his own advisors (or even himself), his opposite number in the Kremlin has never been caught off-guard in public, and isn’t the most emotive.

* The Russian president keeps up to date via thick folders of intelligence reports and press summaries. On the contrary, Trump’s advisors reportedly struggle to get him to read even the shortest of briefings.

* If the US president is Twitter-happy, Putin does not even own a smartphone, according to reports. He makes his feelings known via the domestic press. In a tweet shortly before he was scheduled to meet the Russian president, Trump appeared to blame the chill in relations with Moscow on the investigations into Russian interference in his election victory.