Friends with benefits? The seesaw relationship between Trump and Putin

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin , the two leaders whose relationship has swung between warm handshakes and cold shoulders over the years, will meet in Alaska on Friday.

While the two were close to a bromance during the US President’s first term (2017-2021), their relationship has cooled during his second term. Now, they’ll meet face to face later this week, each trying to outmanoeuvre one another over how to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Trump has previously voiced anger at the Russian president for pressing on with the brutal three-year-old war in Ukraine, which he calls “ridiculous.”

The summit, he says, is “really a feel-out meeting” to gauge Putin’s willingness to negotiate an end to the conflict. “I’m going to be telling him, ‘You’ve got to end this war,’” the US president has said.

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Here’s how the talks could set the tone for the next chapter in a relationship that has never been straightforward.

‘Face to face’

Referring to Trump’s meeting with Putin, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Trump needs “to see him face to face…to make an assessment by looking at him.”

Trump praised Putin for accepting his invitation to come to the US state of Alaska, which was once a Russian colony.

“I thought it was very respectful that the president of Russia is coming to our country, as opposed to us going to his country or even a third place,” Trump said Monday.

It will be only the second one-on-one meeting between the men since the 2018 Helsinki summit.

Trump calls Putin smart and insists he’s always “had a very good relationship” with the Kremlin leader.

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But when Russian missiles pounded Kyiv earlier this year, Trump accused him of “needlessly killing a lot of people,” adding in a social media post: “He has gone absolutely CRAZY!”

For his part, Putin has praised the Republican billionaire’s push to end the Ukraine war. “I have no doubt that he means it sincerely,” Putin said last year when Trump was running for president.

Since returning to the White House in January, the American president has forged a rapprochement with Putin, who has been sidelined by the international community since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Trump and Putin, aged 79 and 72 respectively, spoke for 90 minutes by phone in February, both expressing hope for a reset of relations.

But after a series of fruitless talks and continued deadly Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities, Trump has appeared increasingly frustrated.

“I am very disappointed with President Putin,” Trump told reporters last month. “I thought he was somebody that meant what he said. And he’ll talk so beautifully and then he’ll bomb people at night. We don’t like that.”

Remembering Helsinki

Trump and Putin have met six times, mostly on the sidelines of international events during Trump’s first term.

In his recent book “War,” Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward wrote that Trump spoke to Putin seven times between leaving the White House in 2021 and returning there earlier this year. The Kremlin denies this.

But the defining moment in their relationship remains the July 16, 2018, summit in the Finnish capital Helsinki. After a two-hour one-on-one meeting, Trump and Putin expressed a desire to mend relations between Washington and Moscow.

But Trump caused an uproar during a joint press conference by appearing to take at face value the Russian president’s assurances that Moscow did not attempt to influence the 2016 US presidential election, even though US intelligence agencies had unanimously confirmed that it did.

“I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” Trump said. “He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Given this history, Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen is worried about what could happen at the Trump-Putin summit.

“I am very concerned that President Putin will view this as a reward and another opportunity to further prolong the war instead of finally seeking peace,” she said.

With input from AFP