President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Helsinki, Finland on July 16 for their first bilateral summit, the White House announced Thursday.
“The two leaders will discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues,” said a statement from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.
News that a meeting would be held came as White House national security adviser John Bolton was in Moscow for meetings regarding relations between the two nations. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters Wednesday that the location selected for the meeting was “a very convenient place for us and the American side.”
Trump and Putin have met each other on the sidelines of larger diplomatic summits on two other occasions, but have never engaged in a summit together focused solely on U.S.-Russia relations.
Tensions between the U.S. and Russia have heightened since the 2016 presidential elections. Not only has evidence emerged that Russia meddled in that election, and others, but special counsel Robert Mueller is also involved in an ongoing investigation into the possibility that Trump colluded and coordinated with Moscow during his campaign.
Trump has been looking to appease Russia, and said earlier this month that Russia should be invited back into the G-7, formerly the G-8, summit. He told Fox News that if Putin were at the meeting, he would be able to talk to him directly about things he wanted to see from Russia so the two countries could move forward diplomatically.
“Now, I’m not for Russia. I’m for the United States,” Trump told Fox News earlier this month. “But, as an example, if Vladimir Putin were sitting next to me at a table instead of one of the others … I could say, ‘would you do me a favor and get out of Syria? Would you do me a favor, would you get out of Ukraine?'”
A report from Axios on Thursday said that at the G-7 summit, the president said Crimea should be a part of Russia because everyone there speaks Russian.
