United States President Donald Trump arrived in Finland’s capital Helsinki on Sunday for his first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday. Before leaving for Finland, Trump tweeted that he was “looking forward to meeting with President Putin” and slammed his critics.
“Unfortunately, no matter how well I do at the summit, if I was given the great city of Moscow as retribution for all of the sins and evils committed by Russia...over the years, I would return to criticism that it wasn’t good enough – that I should have gotten Saint Petersburg in addition!” he tweeted.
Trump also attacked the media. “News media is indeed the enemy of the people,” he said. Trump added that the Democrats “resist and obstruct” his every move. “This is why there is such hatred and dissension in our country – but at some point, it will heal!”
Trump has said that he is going into his meeting with Putin with “low expectations”, reported CBS News. He also described the European Union as a foe with regard to trade. “I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade,” CBS News quoted Trump as saying in Scotland on Saturday. “Now, you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe. Russia is foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe.”
On Monday, Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto is scheduled to meet Trump in the morning before Trump and Putin sit down to a bilateral meeting first without aides and then with their teams of support staff, PTI quoted media reports as saying.
The meeting comes just days after a US grand jury charged 12 Russian “intelligence officers” with breaching the Democratic party’s computer networks in an election hacking case. This is the latest development in an ongoing investigation into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. The indictment is the first that directly charges Moscow.
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