When Trump and Putin Meet in Alaska, Will There Be a Repeat of Helsinki 2018?

Trump to meet Putin on August 15 in first US-Russia summit since 2021, amid stalled Ukraine peace talks and rising tensions.

- JOHN DOBSON

It's been a long time coming, but Donald Trump will actually meet Vladimir Putin on August 15 to start the ball rolling on the end of the war, eleven years after the Russian president ordered the annexation of Crimea and eight years after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. When it takes place, the meeting will be the first US-Russia leadership summit since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021, part of an effort to stabilize US-Russia relations, increasingly strained over issues such as cyberattacks, the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and Russia's continued occupation of Crimea.

The last time that Donald Trump met Vladimir Putin face to face was more than seven years ago at the highly publicized and controversial summit in Helsinki, Finland. Many will never forget Trump's deferential tone towards Putin when he failed to challenge him on issues such as Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election, Russia's human rights abuses, the poisoning of Russian dissidents abroad, and Russia's occupation of Crimea.

When asked whether he believed US intelligence agencies or Putin regarding Russia's interference in the election, Trump replied "President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be!" This was seen as publicly rejecting the findings of the CIA and FBI, which had unanimously concluded that Russia interfered in the election to help Donald Trump win. Reaction was swift and harsh from both Democrats and Republicans, with the late Senator John McCain calling it "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in living memory."