How Trump and Putin’s past meetings went

The American president Donald Trump’s summit with the Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Friday is a successful moment in global policy which recalls several memorable previous meetings.

These events have tended to provide major new titles, as well as some overviews in the intriguing, unpredictable and very scanned personal relationship between the two leaders.

Looking back the images also gives clues to the way they could approach the tête-à-tête on Friday in Alaska, during which they will discuss the war in Ukraine.

The two provide very different approaches from private meetings, according to former officials who have treated with one or the two closed -door leaders.

Their first meeting occurred in July 2017, during a G20 summit in Germany. It was only months after Trump entered the White House, while Putin already had decades of political experience to his credit.

In front of the cameras of the world, the two exchanged hot words and a commercial handle, which sets the tone for a generally respectful relationship. In the years to come, the duo continued to express their mutual admiration – although Trump recently told the BBC that he had been “disappointed” from Putin on the erasure of blood in Ukraine.

In fact, Ukraine was raised at this very first meeting, when Trump underlined Russia’s efforts to destabilize his neighbor. Three years earlier, Moscow had illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula.

Quick advance until 2025 – with the large -scale invasion of Ukraine Putin in its fourth year – and Trump is impatient to play the role of peacemaker by negotiating a cease -fire.

Trump said on Wednesday that there would be “very serious consequences” if the Russian chief did not agree to end the war. At other times, he took a softer tone and said that he simply considers that the meeting is a “feeling” exercise.

Trump and Putin saw themselves again face to face in 2017, during an economic forum in Vietnam. They were photographed by discussing among other world leaders, and a cliché seemed to show Putin speaking directly in the ear of his opposite number.

Trump will know Putin’s ability to dominate conversations with long and quickly spoken monologues that give his own opportunities to respond, according to diplomats who described the style of the Russian leader to the BBC.

“Everything in all meetings with Putin concerns power,” observed Sir Laurie Bristow, the UK ambassador to Russia from 2016 to 2020. “Who controls the timing, the substance, the agenda, the tone – the fact is that you never really know what you are going to get.”

Consequently, Sir Laurie said: “Interpreters may find it difficult to follow”, and it was essential from the point of view of Trump that he brought one of his own. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff was based on Kremlin translators at a meeting of his own year earlier this year.

The former assistant of Trump Fiona Hill agreed with Sir Laurie, recalling in an interview with the telegraph his own experiences of managing Putin: “He makes fun of Trump. He uses the Russian language in a way that can be quite sarcastic and ironic. It is completely lost in the translation.”

Perhaps the most manifest public demonstration between Trump and Putin came when they met for fire in camera in Helsinki, Finland, in July 2018.

Trump defended Russia for accusations of interference in the 2016 American presidential election and ranked on Putin’s side on the assessments of his own intelligence agencies. This decision earned him a conviction against intermediate parties in the United States.

Helsinki’s meeting also produced a memorably informal image of Putin offering Trump a football from the recent male World Cup, which had been organized by Russia.

These Putin gestures have always been carefully calculated, according to Sir Tony Brenton, another former British ambassador to Russia. Sir Tony recalled Putin showing “Russian courtesy of the old world” during meetings during which he was present in the mid -2000s, although there was always a degree of reserve below, and he was never a very spontaneous character “.

He added: “Football balloons and smiles, jokes and this kind of thing … He is not naturally a guil’s guy well met”, but he works there when he thinks that it is important for the relationship. “”

The couple met for other G20 peaks in Argentina, in November 2018 and in Japan in June 2019.

John Bolton, the former Trump’s national security adviser with whom he fell later, was present on this last occasion. He told the BBC that he had been struck by the different attitudes of the details, which he followed by Putin’s training in the Soviet intelligence service.

From Putin, he said: “I have never seen him other than being prepared, very calm, very reasonable in his presentation, and I think that is part of his KGB training.”

On the other hand, said Bolton, Trump’s approach to private meetings was similar to his public lectures in public, in that it was subject to free wheel declarations that could even surprise his own aid. “He doesn’t really prepare for them because he doesn’t really think he needs it; he doesn’t think he needs basic information. I’m sure they are preparing information documents as we have always done, and he will not read them.”

Trump believed that a healthy personal relationship with another leader would mean a healthy state of state, said Bolton – and Putin knew it. “He will use his KGB training to try to handle Trump. He has already done so and he will do it again.”

Trump himself minimized expectations before Friday’s meeting in Alaska, noticing: “I think it will be good. But it could be bad.”