According to NBC’s sources, the president would head to Finland as part of a meeting with the leaders of the Nordic countries.
of the United States president Joe Biden is considering a visit to Finland, NBC News -television channel tells based on its sources.
According to the news channel’s sources, a possible visit would be planned in Lithuania on the 11th-12th. in connection with the July NATO summit. Biden’s visit would be part of the meeting of the leaders of the Nordic countries, and thus the visit would not be a direct bilateral visit with the Finnish government.
Discussions around the visit have been going on for months and they continue to take place all the time. According to NBC’s sources, a final decision on the matter has not yet been made.
One of the main purposes of the visit is to highlight one of the Biden administration’s proudest achievements: maintaining and even expanding NATO in the face of a war of aggression from Russia.
One of the goals of the visit would be to interview the Brookings Institution expert interviewed by NBC by Michael O’Hanlon to promote Sweden’s NATO application.
“Any visit where the US president supports Sweden when its security status is uncertain would be much more meaningful than just celebrating Finland’s membership.”
The US National Security Council declined to comment to NBC.
Provided Biden arrives in Finland, he would become the sixth US president who has visited Finland during his term of office. Biden was vice president in Finland in March 2011.
Gerald Ford was the first US president to visit Finland. Ford was in Finland in connection with the European Security and Cooperation Conference (ESC) in July-August 1975. Ronald Reagan on the other hand, he visited Finland in May 1988.
George HW Bush visited Finland as president no less than twice. First in September 1990, when he met the then leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev in Helsinki. The second time Bush arrived in Finland as president was in July 1992. Bush was also vice president in Finland in July 1983.
Bill Clinton arrived in Finland in March 1997 and met the then president of Russia in Helsinki Boris Yeltsin. In 2018 Donald Trump visited Finland in turn and met the President of Russia Vladimir Putin.
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