It’s been a while, but Trump and Putin are no strangerspublished at 10:54 British Summer Time
Madeline Halpert
BBC News
Image source, Getty ImagesTrump and Putin held talks at a summit in Helsinki
The first time Trump and Putin held face-to-face talks was on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017. Both sides said they talked about a wide range of topics, including Russia’s alleged meddling in the US election.
Later in 2017, the US and Russian leaders met at the APEC conference in Da Nang, Vietnam, where they discussed “their determination to defeat ISIS in Syria”, according to a joint statement at the time.
The following year, a Russia-US summit was held in Helsinki. The two men held nearly two hours of private talks in the Finnish capital.
There, Trump sparked an uproar when he sided with Russia, contradicting US intelligence agencies by saying the country had not interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
US intelligence agencies had concluded that Russia was involved in an effort to tip the scale of the US election against former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, with cyber attacks and fake news stories.
“President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be,” Trump said at the time.
The two also met in 2019 at the G20 summit in Japan, where, in front of reporters, Trump told Putin with a smirk: “Don’t interfere in the election.”