Trump-Putin summit set for July 16
President WASHINGTON —
Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet on July 16 in Helsinki, both of their governments announced Thursday, setting the stage for a high-profile attempt to soothe tensions between the United States and Russia.
Both Trump and Putin have pursued the tete-a-tete in hopes of moving beyond friction over Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Shortly before the summit date and venue were announced, Trump took to Twitter, relaying that Russia continues to deny interfering in the 2016 election and airing grievances regarding the probe of special counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion between Putin’s government and Trump’s campaign.
“Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Trump wrote as part of tweets in which he also disparaged former FBI director James Comey and once again claimed that the investigation is tainted by partisan bias.
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.
In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump and Putin would “discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues.”
Niinisto said the agenda would be decided in coming weeks, adding that Trump and Putin would “certainly discuss the overall international situation and hopefully also arms control and disarmament issues” during their meeting in the Finnish capital.
“Even small steps in reducing tensions would be in everybody’s interest,” Niinisto said in a statement.
Niinisto said he had received a joint inquiry last week from high-level U.S. and Russian officials about the possibility of hosting a meeting in Helsinki.
The summit date falls after previously planned stops during a trip to Europe by Trump for a NATO summit meeting July 11 and 12 in Brussels and a visit to Britain on July 13. It also allows Putin to be in Moscow for the World Cup soccer 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.
Trump’s tweets Wednesday about Russian election interference underscored the scrutiny that the summit will garner in light of Mueller’s ongoing investigation.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Trump would confront Putin over the allegations of Russian interference.
“I’m confident that when the president meets with Vladimir Putin, he will make clear that meddling in our elections is completely unacceptable,” Pompeo said.
In his tweets, Trump once again derided Mueller’s investigation as “a Rigged Witch Hunt” and suggested that law enforcement officials should instead investigate the relationship between Russia and his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s decision to highlight Putin’s denials of Russian interference drew sharp rebukes from some Democratic lawmakers.
“The President can either believe the unanimous conclusion of our intelligence community, or he can believe Vladimir Putin,” Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in tweets.
“This is dangerous, this is weak, and it’s yet another slap in the face to the intelligence professionals who quite literally risk their lives to gather this kind of intelligence,” Warner wrote. “Make no mistake: the President just gave Russia the green light to once again interfere in US Elections.”