Image: AOP

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö heads to Washington for a meeting with his US counterpart Donald Trump on Tuesday, August 29.

This will be their first meeting, and the first one-on-one White House meeting between a Finnish and an American president in a decade and a half.

Niinistö's office said on Thursday that details on the visit will be announced later.

Connection to Putin of interest

Trump phoned Niinistö in early December last year, a few weeks after winning the election. According to Niinistö, Trump was clearly aware that the Finnish leader has had "perhaps a slightly exceptional connection to [Russian] President Vladimir Putin."

The two have continued to meet about twice a year, even when other world leaders avoided meeting Putin following the Ukraine crisis. Most recently, Putin visited Finland in late July.

"This [connection] has always interested the Americans and certainly is now of particular interest as a new administration begins," Niinistö said in December to the Finnish news agency STT.

In June, Niinistö indirectly criticised Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, while other Finnish politicians including the prime minister were much more blunt.

Soini at Prayer Breakfast

Niinistö visited President Barack Obama at the White House in May last year as part of a Nordic delegation otherwise made up of prime ministers. Niinistö and Obama had previously met in South Korea and Sweden.

Before that the last such Washington meeting was between President Tarja Halonen and George W. Bush in 2002, two years after her previous visit at the invitation of Bill Clinton.

Last February, Foreign Minister Timo Soini was one of about 500 foreign guests invited to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, where the newly-inaugurated Trump spoke.