Finnish neutrality is the key to hosting the US-Russian summit in Helsinki

HELSINKI – Helsinki, capital of Finland, will host a summit on July 16 between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. Here is an overview of what makes the Nordic country a popular venue for high-level meetings:

Finland has a long tradition of hosting US-Russian summits, especially during the Cold War, when the country was a neutral buffer state and its capital, Helsinki, served as a gateway between East Communist and the West.

The small Nordic nation of 5.5 million people has a border of 1,340 kilometers with Russia – and a complex history with its big neighbor. As part of the Kingdom of Sweden, he took part in dozens of conflicts with Russia in recent centuries and fought two wars in the Soviet Union during the Second World War, from 1939 to 1940 and from 1941 to 1944. In the postwar period, however, Finland pursued pragmatic political and economic relations with Moscow.

President Sauli Niinisto has had close ties with Putin, as did his predecessor Tarja Halonen, and has close ties to US President Donald Trump. He met at the White House last year

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HOW FINLAND WENT

The region known today as Finland served as a battlefield for Russian-Swedish conflicts for centuries, and fell in 1809 into Russian hands in the Napoleonic wars of Europe after 700 years of Swedish rule. However, as the autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, he was allowed to develop politically – having his own parliament – and economically, eventually leading to the independence of Soviet Russia in the turmoil surrounding the Russian revolution in 1917.

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German politicians and academics baptized the "Finlandization" policy in the 1970s, using it derisively to describe the Influence of a powerful country in the policies of a smaller neighbor. The term is much hated by the Finns.

With great public support, Finland joined the European Union in 1995 and was one of the original members of the euro zone, adopting the euro shared in 2002.

But Finland is not a member of NATO According to polls, most Finns remain opposed to joining NATO today, although many government politicians center-right are in favor of this policy. by his balanced game to maintain the good relations of the small country with the West – especially with the United States – and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

At the height of the relaxation in the 1970s, President Urho Kekkonen Soviet Summit in Helsinki in 1975 when US President Gerald Ford, the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and others signed the Helsinki Accords. , a decisive commitment to peace, security and human rights.

As a convenient base for senior US officials eager to exploit the Finns' knowledge of the Soviet Union, often en route to Moscow. In May 1988, President Ronald Reagan met Finnish President Mauno Koivisto in Helsinki while traveling to the USSR

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OTHER HISTORICAL MEETINGS IN FINLAND

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Finland continued to maintain good relations with Moscow and Washington while integrating more deeply into Western security structures.

In September 1990, the Finns hosted a US-Soviet summit between US President George HW Bush and the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in Helsinki on the invasion of Kuwait and the situation in the Middle East [19659022] President Bill Clinton met with his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin in March 1997 to discuss NATO's expansion in the countries of the former Soviet bloc

Recently, a mansion belonging to the Finnish state just outside Helsinki hosted several international meetings, including for delegations from the Korean peninsula and the United States, as well as senior military dignitaries from Russia and the United States. United. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This document may not be published, distributed, rewritten or redistributed.