When Was the Last Time Putin Visited the U.S?

Since Vladimir Putin's inauguration as president on May 7, 2000, five U.S. presidents have been in the White House, but not all have had a meeting with their Russian counterpart on American soil. The last such encounter occurred more than seven years ago.

Putin has made a total of seven American visits as president, according to the State Department's Office of the Historian. His first trip took place on September 6 and 7, 2000, when he met then-President Bill Clinton at the Millennium Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Putin's last visit to the U.S. was in 2015.

Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine this year may have caused relations between Moscow and Washington to descend to an all-time low, but there have been some seemingly cordial moments between the heads of state.

Between November 12 and 15, 2001, Putin went to Washington, D.C, and visited Ground Zero in New York City. He also stayed in Crawford, a small rural town in central Texas where Bush owned a ranch nearby. They paid a visit to Crawford High School where Bush said the pair had enjoyed some "Texas barbecue and pecan pie," NPR reported.

Putin met Bush again nearly two years later at the 58th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2003. The Russian leader also went to the presidential retreat at Camp David, in Maryland.

Putin's fourth visit to the U.S. occurred between June 8 to 11, 2004, for the G8 meeting of the world's biggest economies and also to attend the funeral of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

In September the following year, the Russian leader was stateside again, this time for the UN General Assembly, the 2005 World Summit. That time, he also paid a visit to Bayonne, New Jersey, to unveil a memorial to the 9/11 terror attacks.

Putin had offered his full support to Bush in the wake of 9/11, and his successor Barack Obama also initially tried to forge strong ties when he came into office.

But ties between the Russian and American presidents have waxed and waned, said William Muck, professor of political science, North Central College, in Naperville, Illinois.

"The relationship between Vladimir Putin and the five post-Cold War presidents has ranged from cautious optimism to frosty mistrust, to even open admiration during the Trump presidency," he told Newsweek.

"At no point were any of these relationships particularly warm, yet early in his tenure Putin was more careful about not alienating U.S. presidents," he added.

During a visit in July 2007, Putin was again on Bush's home turf as a guest at the family home in Kennebunkport, Maine, where, according to CBS News, he enjoyed local seafood and blueberries and took a speedboat ride with the president and his father, George H.W. Bush.

In 2008, Putin had to stand aside as president in keeping with the Russian constitution, which restricted him to two consecutive terms. Dmitry Medvedev took over as head of state and Putin became prime minister. The constitution has since been changed

In his four years as head of government, Putin did not make any official visits to the U.S., according to the Office of the Historian, though during that period, Medvedev did make seven American trips.

Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 but it was three years before he came to the U.S. again. In his last known visit to American soil, he spoke at the U.N. General Assembly on September 28, 2015, on a trip in which he met with then-President Barack Obama.

"The negative relationship between Putin and U.S. presidents stands in stark contrast to the deep and meaningful relationship that Bill Clinton built with Boris Yeltsin and George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan developed with Mikhail Gorbachev," Muck said, referring to the Russian leader's predecessors.

While Putin had highly publicized meetings with Donald Trump when the latter was president, and their relationship was the focus of scrutiny, no meeting took place on American soil.