Helsinki Summit: City has hosted meetings between US and Soviet/Russian leaders for decades

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Europe

02:27

Trump will soon head to Helsinki to meet with the Russian president. This isn't the first time the Finnish capital has been in the spotlight, hosting a high-level summit. It's served as a middle ground for US and Soviet or Russian leaders for more than 40 years, as CGTN's Katie Sargent reports.

What should be a quiet summer weekend instead sees Helsinki preparing for Monday's meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

But the city doesn't have to start its planning from scratch. It's been hosting summits going back to the Cold War.

It was the venue for the 1975 summit between US President Gerald Ford and then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Leaders from 33 other countries also attended that three-day event. It led to the signing of the Helsinki Accords which reduced Cold War tensions ahead of the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.

A decade and a half later, US President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev met in Helsinki to discuss Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The two greeted each other warmly, and Gorbachev injected a bit of humor into the formal meeting - presenting Bush with a cartoon depicting them as champion boxers winning the fight over global aggression.

By 1997, the Soviet Union had collapsed and NATO was looking to expand. Russia strongly opposed NATO's plans. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and US President Bill Clinton took up the topic in Helsinki, both expressing optimism about the outcome of their talks.

BILL CLINTON FORMER US PRESIDENT "We agreed that the relationship between the United States and Russia and the benefits of cooperation between NATO and Russia are too important to be jeopardized."

Clinton and Yeltsin developed a strong personal friendship during their years in office, meeting more than 15 times. The Trump-Putin meeting comes at a time of tense relations between the two former Cold War adversaries. But Finns say having a dialogue during tough times is a good thing and they're happy to once again be at the center of it.

MIKA AALTOLA PROGRAM DIRECTOR, FINNISH INSTITUTE OF INT'L AFFAIRS "Finland wants to be helpful and facilitate different solutions, and Finland has a history when it comes to peacekeeping, peace mediation and those things can be helpful, for example, in Ukraine, when they are trying to seek out different ways of solving the issues."

The meeting will be held at a presidential palace overlooking the Baltic Sea. This time around though, no specific agenda has been released. Katie Sargent, CGTN.