Putin in Helsinki for Meeting with Trump

HELSINKI- Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in Helsinki, where his first full-fledged meeting with US President Donald Trump will be held on Monday. The Russian leader’s plane landed at Helsinki’s airport around 13:00 local time, according to Itar Tass..

The US leader showed up in the Finnish capital on Sunday. Putin and Trump are expected to arrive in the presidential palace in downtown Helsinki, come out for a photo-op and, after that, begin one-on-one talks in the presence of the interpreters. According to the organizers, this part of the summit is to last about an hour and a half.

However, the Kremlin earlier said that there are no time limits, that is, it will depend on the two presidents how long the conversation will last.

 Meeting may lay foundations for new mechanism to settle global issues

Andrei Bystritsky, Chairman of the Board of the Valdai International Discussion Club’s Development and Support Foundation told TASS that Monday’s meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump may lay the foundations for a new mechanism to settle global issues.

“The modern world is very complicated since there are many competing, multi-tiered and multidirectional processes, so it needs a matrix to accommodate it all,” the expert said. “This meeting may prove important for the construction of this sort of a cooperative and decision-making matrix,” he added.

“I am optimistic and believe that it may greatly contribute to further steps aimed at ensuring that there is more consistency in relations between the leading countries as far as managing the modern world is concerned,” Bystritsky pointed out.

He added that building mechanisms to maintain global security was particularly important in the face of new threats, including those coming from improved weapons.

First step

According to the Russian expert, the willingness shown by the most militarily powerful states may encourage other global political actors to focus on methods of interaction based on cooperation.

“This meeting is crucial because it may send an important signal to many other countries in the world that such great powers are capable of making agreements despite a large number of contradictions, they are also capable of finding ways to resolve issues and show their readiness to find solutions,” Bystritsky noted.

 “It is important that this step does not remain isolated and is followed by other significant steps that will be able to affect the global situation and the situation in the Middle East in particular, which is what everyone has been concerned about,” the expert said.

The talks should also put relations between Russia and the US on a more constructive track, Bystritsky added. “It is important that a new vector emerges and all the contacts that will follow acquire some direction to allow us to achieve solutions and reasonable results, as well as to find a mechanism to make decisions concerning very complex issues,” he said.

The summit between the Russian and US presidents will take place in Helsinki on July 16. Putin and Trump first held talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017. In November 2017, Putin and Trump held a brief meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Vietnam, adopting a joint statement on Syria.

H.M