Putin arrives late for Helsinki summit with Trump - live updates - Guardian

Putin arrives late for Helsinki summit with Trump - live updates
US president Donald Trump says relations with Russia have ‘never been worse as he arrives in Helsinki for high-stakes summit with Vladimir Putin

LIVE Updated 3m ago

Matthew Weaver

Mon 16 Jul 2018 20.18 AEST First published on Mon 16 Jul 2018 17.07 AEST
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23m ago Putin arrives in Helsinki
1h ago Putin running late
7m ago
20:18
White House pool reporter Annie Karni, confirms that Trump has delayed leaving the Hilton Helsinki Kalastajatorppa, en route to the Presidential Palace.

He was due to depart at 12.40 local time (10.40 BST).

The hold up appears to be on Putin’s end as he has just this moment landed in Helsinki.

There has been no response from Trump’s press secretary Sarah Sanders when she was asked about the delay.

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11m ago
20:15
Putin briskly stepped off his plane, before being greeted on the tarmac. He took of his jacket and waved for the cameras. And then got into his huge new limo.


William Gallo
✔
@GalloVOA
 · 25m
Replying to @GalloVOA
Putin is running a bit late, but he's arrived here in Helsinki. pic.twitter.com/JROj8ou7HT


William Gallo
✔
@GalloVOA
He's here: pic.twitter.com/WRGGzEkXNu

8:09 PM - Jul 16, 2018
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The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker reminds us that the summit was due to start at 1pm local time (11am BST).


Philip Rucker
✔
@PhilipRucker
 Summit was set to begin 11 minutes ago, but leaders are not at the palace yet. It appears Putin is holding up Trump. Keeping people waiting is the Russian president’s MO to assert dominance.

8:12 PM - Jul 16, 2018
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11m ago
20:15
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16m ago
20:09
The diplomatic gamesmanship continues.


Kaitlan Collins
✔
@kaitlancollins
 President Trump and Melania were scheduled to leave their hotel 26 minutes ago. Pool says they are still waiting, presumably on Putin.

Kaitlan Collins
✔
@kaitlancollins
Vladimir Putin — notorious for making people wait — still hasn’t landed in Helsinki. He’s supposed to have his official greeting with President Trump....in 17 minutes.

8:08 PM - Jul 16, 2018
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23m ago
20:03
Putin arrives in Helsinki
Vladimir Putin’s plane has touched down in the Helsinki almost an hour late.

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William Gallo
✔
@GalloVOA
Replying to @GalloVOA
Putin is running a bit late, but he's arrived here in Helsinki.

8:01 PM - Jul 16, 2018
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Andrew Roth
@Andrew__Roth
 Wondering how Donald Trump stacks up on being made to wait by Putin?Putin is current about 55 minutes late landing in Helsinki, taking him past Pope Francis (50 mins) and approaching Modi (1 hour). Things get bad at Lukashenka (3 hours) and Merkel (4 hours 15 min).

7:55 PM - Jul 16, 2018

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26m ago
20:00
 Dmitry Peskov
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman says he hopes the summit will be a “baby step” toward fixing exceptionally bad US-Russian relations, AP reports.

Ahead of Monday’s meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told broadcaster RT that the men had no strict agenda but recognize their “special responsibility” for global stability.

He said European countries shouldn’t be worried about a possible US-Russian rapprochement or decisions about Europe made “over the heads of Europeans.”

Peskov said the Russian leader respects Trump’s “America first” stance because Putin puts Russia first, but said the only way to make progress at the summit is if both sides are open to finding areas of mutual benefit.

Russian officials say Putin is expected to reiterate denials of meddling in the 2016 US presidential campaign.

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30m ago
19:56
Andrew Roth
 President of Russia Vladimir Putin touches the World Cup trophy after the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia Final
 President of Russia Vladimir Putin touches the World Cup trophy after the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia Final Photograph: Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images
The United States is not the only side complaining about cyberattacks ahead of Monday’s summit.

Vladimir Putin told law enforcement officials on Sunday evening that the country had seen a sharp rise in cyberattacks during the World Cup as he thanked Russian law enforcement in person for providing security during the tournament.

“Almost 25 million cyberattacks and other situations of criminal impact on the Russian information infrastructure associated with the organization of the World Cup were neutralized during the championship,” Putin said In Moscow on Sunday evening. The remarks were reported on Monday morning.

Russian officials have pushed the idea of a joint agreement on cybersecurity with the United States for several years. Putin will likely use that fact as a defence when Trump asks about Russia’s election meddling during the 2016 elections, which he said he would “certainly” do in a television interview.

Russia would like an agreement on “informational security,” and includes limits on content that may be objectionable to governments.

That may permit countries to eliminate content from social media sites like Facebook or Twitter that call for protests.

The United States has traditionally defined the issue more closely as cybersecurity, which concerns the use of hacking technology but not content on social media.

Updated at 7.56pm AEST
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33m ago
19:52
Andrew Roth
Putin’s trip to Helsinki marks the first foreign trip for the Russian president’s new Cortege limousine, which was unveiled with great fanfare at his inauguration in May.

The Kremlin pool reporter for Komsomolskaya Pravda, Dmitry Smirnov, snapped a picture of the limousine at Helsinki’s airport where Putin is expected to land more than 45 minutes late.

Дмитрий Смирнов
✔
@dimsmirnov175
 Первый зарубежный выезд «Кортежа»: Лимузин ждет Путина в аэропорту Хельсинки

7:32 PM - Jul 16, 2018

The Kremlin pool arrived earlier in a separate plan and have some time on their hands.

At Putin’s inauguration, the limousine drove him about 200m from the Kremlin’s Senate Building to the Andreevsky Hall.

Monday’s route will be slightly more arduous, usually about a 25-minute ride to the city’s Presidential Palace where he will meet one-on-one with Trump.

He has also shown off the limousine to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed.

The domestically produced luxury car was a point of pride for Putin, who used a Mercedes until this year. The state news agency Sputnik wrote that the car was the first domestically produced limousine for a head of state since Mikhail Gorbachev’s Zil-41052 in 1985.

36m ago
19:50
Putin’s lateness is being interpreted as diplomatic gamesmanship. Speaking to CNN while we still wait for Putin’s plane to land in Helsinki, Thomas Pickering, former US ambassador to the UN, said:

Obviously the lateness is something he could have avoided, so it has some intent. That intent obviously is in some ways to level the playing field of publicity about this meeting so that it isn’t all Trump, whatever he’s saying.

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50m ago
19:36
Newspaper billboards in Helsinki attack the record of both Putin and Trump on free speech.

Huff Post UK reports:

Helsingin Sanomat, one of the country’s top news outlets, unveiled nearly 300 billboards calling out the leaders’ respective records of rocky relations with the media. The billboards were placed along the leaders’ route to the summit.

Aside from the welcome billboard which reads “Mr. President, Welcome to the Land of Free Press,” most of the others feature headlines published in the newspaper over the years, according to a press release.

“The headlines highlight the presidents’ turbulent relations with the media and were published between the years 2000 and 2018,” the statement said.

Editor-in-chief Kaius Nieme also explained that the banners are intended as a display of support for “colleagues who have to fight in ever toughening circumstances on a daily basis both in the U.S. and Russia,” noting that both countries sit pretty far down on the 2018 World Press Freedom Index. Russia is ranked 148 and the U.S. sits at 45. Finland is ranked fourth.

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1h ago
19:27
Putin running late
Putin already has the edge in pre-summit posturing by keeping Trump waiting. His plane to Helsinki is reported to be running late.

Norah O'Donnell🇺🇸
✔
@NorahODonnell
 Looks like Putin will keep Trump waiting. He’s landing about 45 minutes late at 5:47 EST, just about the time he was supposed to be arriving at the Presidential Palace. #HelsinkiSummit

7:03 PM - Jul 16, 2018

1h ago
19:19
European Council president Donald Tusk has suggested that Trump is spreading fake news by telling CBS that the European Union is a foe of the US.

Donald Tusk
(@eucopresident)
America and the EU are best friends. Whoever says we are foes is spreading fake news.

July 15, 2018
 1:26
 Donald Trump calls the EU a foe during interview in Scotland - video
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1h ago
19:14
Trump is confident of getting on with Putin, he told Piers Morgan for ITV’s Good Morning Britain on board air force one.

Trump accepted that Putin “probably is” a ruthless person, but couldn’t tell yet.

Good Morning Britain quoted him saying: “I don’t know him… I met him a couple of times… I think we could probably get along very well”


Good Morning Britain
✔
@GMB
 'I don’t know him… I met him a couple of times… I think we could probably get along very well'

President Trump confessed to @GMB he didn’t know Vladimir Putin well.

3:24 PM - Jul 16, 2018
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