It is the sixth time the two will be face to face, this time with entourages that show well the importance of the moment. Other years there are stories worthy of espionage, interference or hidden notes
It was right at first that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin would have that kind of meetings in which they seem very friends, but they are actually two highly suspicious people, especially when they are in the same room as each other.
That July 2017, when the Republican was still taking his first steps to be president, while the head of state of Russia took almost two decades to lead one of the largest and most powerful countries in the world.
Aware of the fame of relentless spy trained by the KGB that Putin had – and continues to have – Trump decided to confiscate the notes of his own interpreter, preventing them from falling into the wrong hands and that if he knew in full what had happened.
This time it will be different, as Trump has another experience, plays at home and appears before Putin as a friend who just wants to help. It is not that it is believed that the president of the United States will be that naive, because it will not, but the president of Russia will not be able to harass him as he did to so many opponents.
Still, and despite being Putin who plays outside, there are those who fear the mousetrap that can be launched by a former spy who is able to maneuver opponents like no one else.
“There is no way to go from zero progress to a summit that finishes a war in less than a week,” says Samuel Charap, a political scientist at Rand Corporation, in statements to.
At the same newspaper, the warning comes from who knows: “Putin’s technique is the professional lie,” says François Hollande, a former president of France who in 2015 led an unsuccessful attempted peace at Donbass, where the war broke out in 2014, even though Russia was not officially involved.
“Trump will be well advised to avoid showing that he has detailed knowledge of the situation on the ground,” adds François Hollande.
Returning back, precisely to the 2017 G20 summit, there was already on the table the possibility of a serious interference from Russia in the 2016 US elections, which ended Trump’s victory.
At this meeting were also the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia and the US Secretary of State, as well as two interpreters. And it was to the man that he was translating from Russian to English that Trump asked him not to tell anyone about what had happened in that room in Hamburg.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump at his first meeting in Hamburg in 2017 (Evan Vucci/AP)
Later that same day, the president of the United States approached the Russian counterpart in a more personal contact. At that brief moment there was only one more person, Putin’s interpreter. Even before the end of Trump’s first pass through the White House, he wrote him that the president hid details of his meetings with the Russian homologist from his main counselors.
Regarding such famous Hamburg notes, the same newspaper wrote that it was just a behavior that “is part of the president’s larger standard of hiding his communications with Putin of Public Scrutiny to prevent high administration’s upper -offs are fully aware of what he said to one of the leading opponents of the United States.”
The meeting would create internal stir. Senator Mark Warner had no doubt in pointing out that Trump “broke the protocol.” In reaction to what was made public by the post, the Democrat told that “the US government does not know what was discussed between Trump and Putin in that pathetic and embarrassing meeting.”
Just four months later, the two would meet in the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, which joined world leaders in Vietnam. Once again, Trump again said that there had been no interference from Russia in the elections that gave him victory a year earlier.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump lead a group of leaders at the Asia-Pacific summit that took place in 2017 at Vietname (Jorge Silva/AP)
And until Friday they only met three more times. It was in Helsinchia, Finland, in a new G7 meeting. Already without ministers or secretaries, they met only with the interpreters. The theme of the elections again appeared, and Trump almost made vows of love: “President Putin says it was not Russia. I see no reason for it to have been.”
The penultimate time they were together was again in the context of G7. That same year 2018, in the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires (the cover photography is from this meeting), had a more formal contact, and Trump chose to bring any interpreter or counselor. The last time they were together was in June 2019.
A look at the direction of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin during a business conference in Helsinki in 2018. In Russia, we organized the World Championship this year (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
This Friday at the distant Alaska, half a world away from where the war is actually happening, neither wants to risk being outstanding. This is why they are not only interpreters, but also several responsible on each side. Putin, for example, takes foreign ministers, defense or finance, as well as the mysterious CEO of the Russian Sovereign Fund, Kirill Dmitiev.
Regarding what might happen, François Hollande looks 10 years back, to Minsk’s agreements, who did little or nothing to secure peace in Ukraine. Putin “is not in a hurry,” says the former French president, who was 17 hours in the capital of Belarus to negotiate a ceasefire at Donbass.
“He knows he will still be in power next month, two years, perhaps until the end of his life. Trump is in a hurry because he has swore all the conflicts in the world and wants results,” he says.
Therefore, Putin is expected to wrap. There is no other way to say it. “The meeting will start by telling the whole story. It may take an hour, maybe more, if they don’t stop it. The Russian negotiation method is to last a lot of time, but nothing else happens,” adds François Hollande.
In the end, and whatever leaving the meeting, the president of Russia will always leave an “openness”, which may arise in “mediation, another meeting or a working group.” The goal, explains François Hollande, “is that the other side see that Putin changed a little.”
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at the center of several world leaders during a meeting in Japan (AP)
Knowing beforehand that there will be no signed document -Kremlin made a point of making it clear -this clearly opens doors that this is the technique of Putin, which is even having some success on the ground for the first time for long months.
It remains to know which side will be the needle of Trump’s patience. He said it: it is better to have a joint press conference at the end, but if it goes wrong it won’t happen.
Like the previous four times, it will always be a mysterious meeting with several layers, many of them.
