Here's How Past US Presidents Have Met With Russian Leaders

Donald Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin is the latest in a long history of diplomatic and at times tense meetings between the two adversarial nations.

By
Gabriel H. Sanchez
by Gabriel H. Sanchez

BuzzFeed News Photo Essay Editor

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President Franklin D. Roosevelt meets with Joseph Stalin, the general secretary of the Communist Party, in February 1945, near Yalta in Crimea, Soviet Union.

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From left: British Prime Minster Winston Churchill, President Harry Truman, and Stalin shake hands during the Potsdam Conference in July 1945.

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Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev receives a turkey from President Dwight D. Eisenhower during his state visit on Sept. 15, 1959.

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Khrushchev talks with President John F. Kennedy in Vienna on June 4, 1961.

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Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin and President Lyndon B. Johnson engage in a discussion assisted by an interpreter over lunch at the Glassboro Summit Conference in Glassboro, New Jersey, in June 1967.

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President Richard Nixon and visiting Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev during the official welcoming ceremonies on the White House lawn on June 18, 1973.

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President Gerald Ford meets with Brezhnev at the Vladivostok Summit in Vladivostok, Soviet Union, on Nov. 23, 1974.

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President Jimmy Carter meets Brezhnev in Vienna to negotiate the strategic arms limitation treaty on June 18, 1979.

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President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in New York on Dec. 7, 1988.

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President Bush and Gorbachev during the 1991 Moscow Summit.

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President Bill Clinton shares a laugh with Boris Yeltsin during the Russian president's visit for the United Nations' 50th anniversary on June 26, 1995.

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President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin wave as they go for a ride in Putin's 1956 Volga before dinner on May 8, 2005, at his residence outside Moscow.

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President Barack Obama and then–Russian president Dmitry Medvedev eat burgers during a lunch at Ray's Hell Burger on June 24, 2010, in Arlington, Virginia.

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Putin meets with his US counterpart, Obama, on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders' Summit in Hangzhou, China, on Sept. 5, 2016.

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President Donald Trump and Putin shake hands ahead of a meeting in Helsinki on July 16, 2018.

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