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The American billionaire, who has been at the White House for 18 months, hopes to establish a personal relationship with the former KGB official, who has ruled Russia since 2000.
The American president, Donald Trump, and his counterpart The Russian Vladimir Putin meets this Monday in Helsinki in a long-awaited summit where all his statements and actions will be observed under the microscope. (Read: Trump and Putin against Europe)
The plane of Vladimir Putin landed at the international airport of the Finnish capital, one day after attending Moscow in the final of the World Cup held in Russia
For his part, Trump and his wife Melania, arrived in Helsinki on Sunday, began the day by having their breakfast with the Finnish president Sauli Niinistö and his wife Jenni Haukio
"I believe meetings with Russia, China, North Korea, nothing bad will come from that and maybe something good will come out", Trump said.
The American billionaire, who spent 18 months in the White House, hopes to establish a personal relationship with the former head of the KGB, who has ruled Russia since 2000. But it is difficult to predict what will be Trump's tone to provocation.
Many diplomats and analysts fear that the US president will make a series of concessions to Putin, on issues such as the 1945 war in Syria or the annexation of Crimea by the Russia.
A few hours before the summit, Trump said in a surprising tweet that the tense relations between Washington and Moscow are due to the FBI's "witch hunt", which investigates the influence Russian in the presidential elections. Americans of 2016.
The Republican president also blamed his predecessor at the White House, Barack Obama, for accusing him of not having reacted before the summer. case.
having meetings with Russia, China, North Korea, nothing bad will come out of that and maybe something good will come out ", Trump says in an interview for CBS in which he recognizes who attends his appointment with Putin with "low expectations."
Putin for his part did not reveal his expectations or his goals on the summit with Trump.
"The state of bilateral relations is very bad," said only his adviser Yuri Ushakov. "We must begin to restore them."
Syria will surely have a prominent place in the talks between the two leaders.
Trump is anxious to distance himself from the conflict and withdraw American troops deployed in the country.
On the contrary, Russia, intervening to support the regime of Bashar Al Asad since 2015, it has more q It never intends to play a key role in Syria.
The two leaders meet early in the afternoon at the Presidential Palace in the center of the Finnish capital, which has a long tradition of hospitality. the summits East-West.
They meet alone with their interpreters at the presidential palace, before joining their respective delegations for lunch.
Like his predecessors Democrats and Republicans, Trump has already met Putin, but this time the format of their meeting, as well as the timing, make it a separate date.
The summit of this Monday is the last leg of a weeklong trip across Europe in which Trump attacked his allies, particularly at Germany without criticizing the Russian president.
"Completely ready!"
The meeting takes place in a particular context, due to the investigation conducted by the Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on the Russian interference in favor of Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign
spectacular new episode three days before the summit, with the imputation of 12 Russian intelligence agents accused of hacking the computers of the US Democratic Party.
"We must treat Putin's Russia as the state of the bandit," said Richard Haass
Trump promised to address the issue with his Russian counterpart, but no one is waiting that he asks for explanations about what happened.
The tenant of the White House denounces being the victim of a "witch hunt" in this investigation, and on several occasions he seems to agree with Putin, who denies any interference in the elections, against the criteria of American intelligence agencies.
Many analysts fear, however, that the US president is not very firm against Putin.
"We must treat Putin's Russia as the state of the bandit," said Richard Haass, president of the American think tank "Council on Foreign Relations", ahead of the summit.
This is the fourth time that an American president meets his Russian counterpart in Helsinki, after meetings between Gerald Ford and Leonid Brezhnev (1975), George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev (1990) and Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin (1997).
A few hours before the Trump-Putin summit, the NGO Human Rights Council (HRC) illuminated the presidential palace of Helsinki with the slogan "the whole world looks at them" to denounce the homosexual atrocities in Chechnya.
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