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Trump sets low bar for meeting

 
Russian President Vladimir Putin is to meet Trump today.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is to meet Trump today.
Published July 15, 2018

President Donald Trump arrived in Helsinki, Finland on Sunday for a closely watched one-on-one summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, hours after telling an interviewer that he was going into the meeting today with "low expectations."

Trump also said he had given no thought to asking Putin to extradite the dozen Russian military intelligence officers indicted this past week on charges related to the hacking of Democratic targets in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

But after being given the idea by his interviewer, Trump said "certainly I'll be asking about it" although extradition is high unlikely. The U.S. doesn't have an extradition treaty with Moscow and can't force the Russians to hand over citizens. Russia's constitution also prohibits turning over citizens to foreign governments.

In the interview, conducted Saturday by anchor Jeff Glor of CBS Evening News, Trump was asked whom he considered to be his biggest foe globally. Trump named the European Union, citing "what they do to us on trade." He added: "Now you wouldn't think of the European Union, but they're a foe. Russia is a foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly a foe."

In response, Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, wrote in a sharp riposte on Twitter: "America and the EU are best friends. Whoever says we are foes is spreading fake news."

And, on the way to meet with a leader who has cracked down on the press in his country, Trump tweeted that the U.S. news media is the "enemy of the people" and complained that "No matter how well I do at the Summit" he'll face "criticism that it wasn't good enough."

As his NATO allies watched in Brussels, Trump declined to call Putin an enemy or a friend, but referred to him as a "competitor."

Thousands of Finns, meanwhile, took to the streets. About 2,500 people marched in the Finnish capital on Sunday behind a banner that read "Helsinki calling for human rights." The country's biggest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, arranged for the words "Mr. President, welcome to the land of the free press" to be displayed across the outside of the main airport, in English and Russian.

Still, by Sunday afternoon in Finland, the number of people marching was well below the 12,000 that organizers had expected. Meanwhile, the youth wing of the country's anti-immigration party, The Finns, managed to get about 50 people to hold a pro-Trump rally. Organizers distributed hats that read "Make Helsinki Great Again."

The Associated Press and the New York Times contributed to this story.