President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland next month, the White House announced Thursday.
“President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation will meet on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland. The two leaders will discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
Trump’s July 16 meeting with Putin will follow a mid-July scheduled meeting at the annual meeting of NATO leaders in Brussels, Belgium. NATO allies are reportedly worried about the optics of Trump’s meeting with Putin after what they hope will not be a confrontational meeting.
Trump was pressed about the topics for the meeting Wednesday saying “I think we’ll be talking about Syria. I think we’ll be talking about Ukraine. I think we’ll be talking about many other subjects. And we’ll see what happens. So you never know.”
Trump tweeted about Russia before the announcement:
Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election! Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t Shady James Comey and the now disgraced FBI agents take and closely examine it? Why isn’t Hillary/Russia being looked at? So many questions, so much corruption!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2018
The meeting will Trump and Putin’s third after seeing each other last year at the G20 meeting in Germany and in Vietnam at the APEC summit.
The Helsinki summit will be Pres Trump’s 3rd set of meetings with Putin. They met previously at
-The G20 in Hamburg on July 7 2017 – a 2hr 16 min meeting
-The APEC Summit in Da Nang, Nov 10-11 2017: 2 or 3 pull-asides— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) June 28, 2018