AP: With rattled world capitals watching, President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are ready to go one-on-one in a summit that plays out against a backdrop of fraying Western alliances, a new peak in the investigation into Russian election meddling and fears that Moscow’s aggression may go unpunished.
Monday’s meeting was condemned in advance by an assortment of members of Congress from both parties after the U.S. indictment last week of 12 Russian military intelligence officers accused of hacking Democrats in the 2016 election to help Trump’s presidential campaign. Undeterred, the American president is set to go face-to-face with Putin, the authoritarian leader for whom he has expressed admiration. The meeting comes as questions swirl about whether Trump will sharply and publicly rebuke his Russian counterpart for the election meddling that prompting a special counsel probe that Trump has repeatedly labeled a witch hunt.
While Trump was eager for a made-for-TV spectacle that will dominate headlines like his sit-down with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last month, the Kremlin’s primary mission was simply the occurrence of the summit. Putin hopes the meeting, mere hours after he presided over the World Cup finals, will help him forge good personal ties with Trump and focus on areas where Moscow and Washington could find common ground, such as Syria.
The two leaders first meet one-on-one in the Finnish presidential palace’s opulent Gothic Hall, then continue their discussions with an expanded group of aides and over lunch in the Hall of Mirrors, once the emperor’s throne room. The leaders will then take questions at a press conference before going their separate ways.
Putin will likely not be shooting for official recognition of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea or easing of the crippling U.S. sanctions, aware that the U.S. Congress would never allow such action. But he would welcome a symbolic end to Western protests over Crimea and Moscow’s attempts to destabilize elections and traditional Western alliances and norms.
