July 16 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland, Monday for the first U.S.-Russia summit in nearly a decade.
The leaders tackled a schedule that included three separate sessions over five hours.
The two were supposed to start with a bilateral one-on-one meeting at 6:20 a.m. EDT, but it was slightly delayed by Putin’s late arrival in Helsinki. The pair met for a brief media session at about 7:10 a.m. before they held their first talks.
Trump congratulated Putin on Russia’s hosting the World Cup and said he looked forward to discussing a slate of issues with the Kremlin leader.
“I think the world wants to see us get along. We are the two great nuclear powers, we have 90 percent of the world’s nuclear [weapons]. That’s not a good thing, that’s a bad thing,” Trump said at the brief media session. “We, hopefully, can do something about that because it’s not a positive force, it’s a negative force.”
Trump also said he’s confident Washington and Moscow can improve relations and said a friendly and productive relationship is “a good thing.”
Trump’s motorcade arrived just before 7 a.m. EDT at the beige neoclassical palace on the Esplanadi near Market Square in the Finnish capital.
Hundreds of people in the vicinity of the palace turned out to watch and take photos of the motorcade, and some held signs and flags. A Finnish newspaper placed billboards around Helsinki with various messages for Trump — like “Make Human Rights Great Again” and “Mr. President, welcome to the land of free press.”
A second, expanded bilateral meeting with presidential aides followed the first session. A joint news conference marked the end of the meetings.
After speaking to reporters, Trump and first lady Melania Trump were set to leave the palace for the airport for their return trip to Washington, D.C. They are scheduled to return at Andrews Air Force Base around 8:45 p.m. EDT and the White House 15 minutes later.
Before the summit Monday, Trump tweeted that U.S.-Russia relations are at a low point.
“President Obama thought that Crooked Hillary was going to win the election, so when he was informed by the FBI about Russian Meddling, he said it couldn’t happen, was no big deal, & did NOTHING about it,” he wrote. “When I won it became a big deal.
“Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity.”
Trump has said he plans to ask Putin about the Kremlin’s purported interference in the 2016 election, as well as the Syrian civil war and possibly the annexation of Crimea by Moscow in 2014.
Monday’s is the first U.S.-Russian summit in eight years. The last, between former Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, was held in Prague, Czech Republic, on April 8, 2010.