By Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Vladimir Putin is set to become the first Russian president to visit Alaska, a territory Moscow sold to the U.S. in 1867 for $7.2 million, assuming a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump goes ahead there on Friday as planned.
It would be Putin’s eighth trip to the U.S. as president, a post he has held since the end of 1999 apart from a four-year hiatus in 2008-2012 when close ally Dmitry Medvedev held the top Kremlin job.
Here are details of Putin’s previous visits to the United States as president, and a summary of those made by Medvedev and Boris Yeltsin, his predecessor.
2015 – The last time Putin was in the U.S. he visited New York for the United Nations General Assembly and held talks with then-President Barack Obama. The encounter was a frosty one with Obama sharply criticising Putin over the conflict in eastern Ukraine where Russia-backed forces were fighting government troops. The two leaders also clashed over Syria and the fate of then President Bashar al-Assad at a time when Moscow was poised to intervene militarily on Assad’s side against rebel forces.
2007 – Putin travelled to the family home of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, in Kennebunkport, Maine, at a time when ties were badly strained over Russia’s opposition to a planned U.S. missile defence system in Eastern Europe, U.S. criticism over what is said was Putin’s rollback of democracy, and disagreement over statehood for Kosovo. Bush and Putin held informal talks on nuclear security, Iran and North Korea. Bush later described how they spent a weekend fishing and discussing missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic which Putin was worried about. Some common ground was found, Bush noted, quipping that Putin was the only one to catch a fish.
2005 – Putin attended the 2005 World Summit in New York and later held White House talks with President Bush. Their meeting was partly overshadowed by Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans. Putin offered aid and words of support. Concerns about Iran and North Korea developing nuclear weapons loomed large.
2004 – Putin attended a G8 summit on Sea Island in Georgia, and was also in Washington at the funeral of late President Ronald Reagan. He held talks with President Bush who hailed the Russian leader as his friend. Iraq was in focus, a year after the U.S. invasion, with Putin helping Bush get a resolution through the U.N. which supported the interim Iraqi government.
2003 – Putin was in New York for the U.N. General Assembly and also held talks at Camp David in Maryland with President Bush. Putin expressed misgivings about the U.S. invasion of Iraq that same year, but the joint news conference was a friendly affair with Bush declaring Washington and Moscow allies in what he called “the war on terror.” They spoke of expanding cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan and of broadening U.S.-Russia military cooperation.
2001 – Putin went on a state visit to the U.S. taking in Washington, New York as well as Texas two months after nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks. Putin, the first foreign leader to phone Bush to express solidarity after the attack, visited the site in New York where the World Trade Center once stood and wrote on a wall: “The great city and the great American nation will win!!!”
The former KGB officer attended a restricted access CIA briefing, met U.S. Congress leaders, and held talks with President Bush, attending an informal dinner at Bush’s ranch in Texas.
2000 – Putin flew to New York to attend the Millennium Summit and gave a speech to the U.N. Security Council of which Russia is a permanent member. In it, he urged a multilateral rather than unilateral approach to international affairs. He also held talks with then-President Bill Clinton with both agreeing to recommit to, and in some cases extend, various initiatives concerning arms control and nuclear non-proliferation.
Dmitry Medvedev, who was president from 2008-2012, made five visits to the United States and cast himself at the time as a pro-Western moderniser. His most high-profile trip was in June 2010 when he met President Obama at a diner near Washington for a burger and fries amid an attempted “reset” in ties. Medvedev has since become one of Russia’s most outspoken anti-Western hawks.
Boris Yeltsin, who was Russia’s first post-Soviet president, made four official trips to the U.S. after the 1991 Soviet collapse. Bill Clinton would reveal in an interview years later that on one of his trips to Washington in the mid-1990s, U.S. secret service agents found Yeltsin in the early hours wandering in the street in his underwear, drunk and craving pizza.
(Reporting by Andrew OsbornEditing by Aidan Lewis)
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