Summit still on despite indictments

HELSINKI — President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold their summit as planned on Monday at a 19th century presidential palace in Helsinki.

The highly anticipated meeting will come just days after the U.S. Justice Department indicted Russian officials for allegedly hacking servers and accounts used by Trump’s rivals during the 2016 presidential campaign, and amid calls to cancel the summit.

In response to the indictments, Democrats overwhelmingly called for Trump not to meet with Putin. And a press release from Arizona Sen. John McCain’s office added a rare GOP name to that list. McCain said the summit should not take place if Trump is not prepared to hold Putin accountable.

Nevertheless, the two leaders will be hosted at the palace by Finland President Sauli Niinistö.

According to Niinistö’s office, Trump and Putin will hold a bilateral meeting, followed by a larger working lunch at the palace. The two leaders will then hold a joint news conference.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are also set to meet on Monday.

Putin and Trump have met twice before on the sidelines of international meetings. The Helsinki summit at a palace overlooking the Baltic Sea will be their first official stand-alone meeting. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev held talks at the same venue in 1990.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump are scheduled to start the day joining Niinisto and his spouse, Jenni Haukio, for breakfast at the presidential residence in Helsinki where the couple lives most of the time. Niinisto also will hold a bilateral meeting with Putin.

Finland, a Nordic nation of 5.5 million, has a long legacy of hosting U.S.-Soviet and U.S.Russian summits due to its geographic location and perceived neutrality.

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.

The last time a summit brought presidential entourages from Moscow and Washington to Helsinki was in 1997. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin held talks on arms control and NATO expansion.

U.S.-Russia ties have plummeted to post-Cold War lows over the Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the war in Syria and the allegations that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential race.