Trump, Putin to meet at historic palace
HELSINKI (AP) — US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet today at the Finnish presidential palace in Helsinki that overlooks the Baltic Sea — the same venue where two of their predecessors met in 1990.
Finnish President Sauli Niinisto’s office said Trump and Putin will hold their summit at the 19th-century Presidential Palace, located a stone’s throw away from the capital’s iconic waterfront Market Square.
Putin and Trump have met twice before on the sidelines of international meetings but the Helsinki summit will be their first official stand-alone meeting.
US President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev held talks at the same venue in 1990.
To kick off the day, Trump and his wife Melania will join Niinisto and his wife Jenni Haukio for breakfast at Mantyniemi, another presidential residence in Helsinki where the couple lives most of the time. Niinisto will also hold a bilateral meeting with Putin.
Finland, a Nordic nation of 5.5 million, has a long legacy of hosting US-Soviet and US Russian summits due to its geographic location and perceived neutrality.
The last time a summit brought presidential entourages from Moscow and Washington to Helsinki was in March 1997, when US President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin held talks on arms control and NATO expansion.
In June, US Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, in a manor house owned by the Finnish state to exchange views on US-Russia military relations, Syria and international security.
Along with the presidents, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will meet at the Presidential Palace today.
Sari Autio-Sarasmo of the University of Helsinki’s Aleksanteri Institute said the Finnish capital and Vienna, the capital of Austria, were important conduits between the East and the West during the Cold War.
While both European cities were centers of espionage, Helsinki specialized in relaying information and acting as a go-between for world’s two superpowers.
“As a member of the European Union, Finland doesn’t anymore emphasize its neutrality, but strong expertise, particularly on Russia, and good location make Finland a very useful meeting place,” said Autio-Sarasmo, who studies Cold War history.
US President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev met in Helsinki in 1975 to sign the landmark Helsinki Accords, a watershed commitment to peace, security and human rights.
Finland joined the European Union in 1995, but has remained outside of NATO as a militarily non-aligned nation in a similar way as close Nordic neighbor Sweden.
The 32,292-square-foot Presidential Palace, which underwent a major renovation completed in 2015, has hosted other prominent guests, including Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and the late (now a saint) Pope John Paul II.
It was built for a wealthy Finnish merchant in the early 19th century on the grounds of a former salt store house.