Vincent Obia
nited States President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin are due to meet on July 16 in Helsinki, Finland, in a long-awaited first summit expected to help reduce rising belligerence between the two world powers.
“The two leaders will discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement Thursday regarding the summit that has been on the minds and lips of many since Trump’s election in 2016.
A Kremlin foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Wednesday that the TrumpPutin meeting will include a private conversation between the presidents and a joint news conference. The Russian state news agency, Tass, quoted Ushakov as saying the two presidents may adopt a joint statement “that could outline further steps on both sides in terms of improving bilateral relations, terms for joint actions in the international arena, and terms for ensuring international stability and security.”
The planned Trump-Putin meeting followed negotiations in Russia this week by the U.S. president’s national security adviser, John Bolton. Tass said indications towards the summit first emerged following a phone conversation between the two presidents on March 20. It said the summit was then discussed through “closed channels”.
There is considerable enthusiasm and anticipation on both sides that the July summit fixed on the same day Russia will be hosting the finals of the World Cup would help to smoothen the many rough edges in relations between Russia and America. From allegations of Russian meddling in the last U.S. presidential election to the protracted proxy wars in Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, and other parts of the Middle East and Baltic region, the U.S. and Russia have adopted a mutually belligerent stance that is pushing the world to a new cold war era experts say may be more dangerous than the one humanity survived between 1946 and 1989.
While he received Bolton in Moscow, Putin was reported as saying he did not want to escalate tensions with the U.S. and he was willing to discuss how to “restore full-fledged relations based on equality and mutual respect.”
Bolton said he wanted to discuss “how to improve Russia-U.S. relations and find areas where we can agree and make progress together.”
The week before Bolton’s Russia trip, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told MSNBC that his country was “trying to find places where we have overlapping interests [with Russia], but protecting American interests where we do not.”