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MOSCOW (AP) — When the men in the White House and the Kremlin meet, history always takes note — but how the encounters get recorded may be as different as the leaders of Russia and the United States.
Sometimes, the results grab the most attention. At other times, the significance of a U.S.-Russia summit is what almost happened. Occasionally, it's an unguarded remark or maladroit phrasing that the world notices.
The 1945 Yalta conference, which was President Franklin Roosevelt's last significant appearance before his death two months later, brought him together with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin to plan for Europe's post-World War II future.
They agreed that if Stalin joined the fight against Japan, he could take back territory Russia had lost to Japan decades earlier. Initially regarded as a significant success, the conference in Crimea later was seen as ceding too much influence to Moscow.
In 1961, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev met in Vienna, Austria with much fanfare and considerable tension. The Soviet leader demanded reunification of Germany on terms unfavorable to the United States. Two months later, the Berlin Wall was built.
The 1972 meeting of Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon in Moscow was highly productive, yielding deals to limit ballistic missiles and on slowing the nuclear arms race.
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev appeared close to reaching a major arms reduction deal at their 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. They fell short, but the meeting in an austere white house on the Icelandic coast brought substantial attention to human rights issues. It also has been interpreted as having paved the way for the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty.
George W. Bush felt chemistry with Vladimir Putin when they met in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2001 — possibly to Bush's later chagrin.
"I was able to get a sense of his soul," Bush said of the Russian leader, a remark that would be derided as a sign of the American president's naiveté.
Barack Obama didn't know a nearby microphone was on when he spoke at the 2012 G20 meeting in Seoul with Dmitry Medvedev, who was Putin's placeholder in the Kremlin for four years.
Obama told Medvedev he would "have more flexibility" on missile defense issues if he won re-election to the White House. Medvedev said he would "transmit this information to Vladimir," leaving no doubt about who was in charge in Russia.
Obama's final formal meeting with Putin, at a 2016 G20 meeting in Hangzhou, China, was chilly and unsmiling. Obama had led the move to expel Russia from the Group of Eight because of Russia's annexation of Crimea. Putin's resentment was palpable.
Putin found a much different partner in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017: Donald Trump, who had expressed open admiration for the Russian leader and promised improved relations. Putin claimed that Trump believed him when he said that Russia had not meddled in the election that brought Trump to the White House.
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