There was a time when Finnish leaders used saunas for more direct diplomacy. In the 1960s, the Finnish leader of the Cold War – Urho Kekkonen – took then-Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev into an overnight sauna and convinced him to allow Finland to integrate with the West. . In 2005, when Vladimir Putin visited Helsinki, he took a sauna with the husband of the president of Finland, Tarja Halonen, and described it as “a wonderful experience”.
