The Russian president Vladimir Putin, where will meet for the first time tomorrow, Wednesday, with Joe Biden, has often had strained relations in the past with the five American presidents with whom he has been associated since end of 1999 when he first took power. Initially, contacts between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his American counterpart Bill Clinton were warm, despite NATO’s plans to expand eastward, but the war in Kosovo ruined the honeymoon in US-Russian relations after the Cold War, according to the APE.
After Yeltsin resigned on 31 December 1999, Washington immediately seemed distrustful of its dolphin, Vladimir Putin. He is “a tough man (…) very determined, who prefers to act”, the then commented US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on January 2, 2000. “We have to watch his actions very carefully.” In the first meeting Clinton-Putin in June 2000, The American president publicly praised his Russian counterpart, who, according to Clinton, was able to create a Russia “with prosperity and power, protecting freedoms and the rule of law.”
George W. Bush
After their first meeting on June 16, 2001 George W. Bush he had stated that he looked his Russian counterpart in the eyes: “I could see his soul: that of a man deeply committed to his country (…) I consider him an amazing leader”. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Putin, who launched a second war in Chechnya, immediately expressed solidarity with Bush and the “war on terror.”
However the calm did not last long: already from In December 2001, Washington withdrew from the 1972 ABM agreement to build a missile shield in Eastern Europe, which was denounced by Moscow. In 2003, Russia condemned the US-led invasion of Iraq and, a year later, Washington’s influence in the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine.
Barack Obama
In 2009 the president Obama called for a “reset” of Russian-American relations. A year earlier, Putin had become Russia’s prime minister, with his protégé Dmitry Medvedev as president. Just before his visit to Russia in July 2009 The American president estimated that Putin “has a foot in the old way of doing things and a foot in the new”.
“What interests me is to speak directly to my counterpart, the president,” Obama said in Moscow. Despite initial successes – mainly the signing in 2010 of a new Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – bilateral relations have intensified. In August 2013, Moscow offered political asylum to American Edward Snowden.
A few days later Obama cancels summit with Putin denouncing a return “to the Cold War mentality”. The Ukraine crisis of 2014, with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and economic sanctions against Moscow, and then Russia’s intervention in Syria in 2015, further worsened bilateral relations.
Donald Trump
When he was a candidate Donald Trump had pledged to restore good relations with Russia. After his election, His term was overshadowed by accusations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. During a press conference in July 2018 with Putin, he seemed to give more weight to the denials of the Russian president, than to the results of the FBI investigations.
“I have President Putin who just said it was not Russia (…) and I do not see why it would be,” Trump said. After strong criticism even within the Republican Party, the American president stated that he did not express himself properly. “I love Putin very much, he loves me very much. We communicate well “, he also stated in September 2020 during his election campaign.
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