Donald Trump exits Vladimir Putin to the maximum in front, at least looking at the map. Alaska is the perfect place to meet, to which the president of the United States invited a Russian leader.
Trump will gotta cross about 5,000 kilometres in a consecutive line from Washington to a military base on the northern edge of Anchorage. From Kremlin to gathering place, it is little than 7,000 kilometres.
Also from a historical point of view, Alaska is simply a place where both Americans and Russians have connections. erstwhile on Friday, August 15, the distant subarctic north-west end of America is at the heart of planet politics, both delegations should not feel foreign.
Inhabited by Russia, purchased by the USA
By the end of the last ice, about 10,000 years ago, there was even a land bridge between today's Far East of Russia and Alaska. most likely the first people to scope the American continent. Elevated sea level later prevented crossing the Bering Strait – and Alaskan natives remained alone. The Aleuts, the people of the archipelago of the same name located between Alaska and Russia, call this country "Alyaska", from which its name comes today.
In 1725, Russian Tsar Peter the large sent sailor Vitus Bering on an expedition during which he sailed a strait named after him. In the following decades, Russian sailors reached different places in Alaska, established settlements, and engaged in lucrative fur trade. In 1799, Tsar Paul I granted a trade monopoly to the Russian-American Company, which henceforth besides held administrative functions in the colony.
In the mid-18th century, income from the fur trade fell due to the fact that Russian managers were hunting seals and otters besides intensively. Russia was besides in a hard economical situation due to the Crimean war and wanted to sale Alaska with profit. The United Kingdom, which inactive ruled Canada at the time, was interested. In the end, however, the United States did not let its then rival to win and offered a crucial amount of 7.2 million dollars for those times.
Oil and the celebrated mountain
Alaska was considered chaotic barren land for a long time, until large oil deposits were discovered there in 1967. This climate-threatening energy carrier is inactive mostly liable for Alaska's economical boom. A fewer hours after taking office on 20 January 2025 Donald Trump issued a decree to extend oil and gas production in Alaska, while at the same time softening the nature protection regulations.
In his inaugural speech, Trump besides announced that he intended to re-give Alaska's highest mountain, and thus the full United States, the name Mount McKinley.
This name was utilized from 1917 to 2015, before president Barack Obama restored its indigenous sound to Denala. Unlike Obama, William McKinley is 1 of Trump's favourite predecessors. It utilized customs as a means of force in abroad policy and enlarged the United States' territory with Hawaii and another islands in the Pacific and Atlantic.
Cerques, military bases and refugees
The traces of Russia remained present in Alaska besides under the American flag. To this day, there are about 80 Russian Orthodox parishes that celebrate Christmas according to the Orthodox rite only in early January.
During the Cold War, as the equivalent of an iron curtain in Europe, the Bering Sea went by the alleged "ice curtain". In the event of the russian Alaska attack, it abruptly became the first line of defence for the American continent. The American Army formed bases specified as Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson close Anchorage, where Trump and Putin will meet today.
A Alaskan Republican politician, Sarah Palin, who ran for Vice president with John McCain in 2008, warned against "a neighbour from behind," or Russia. The then Alaskan politician wanted to increase her vigilance towards Russia, whose troops had just entered Georgia, and called for the admission of Georgia and Ukraine to NATO. The fact is that in the Bering Strait, the 2 islands of Diomedes lie only 3 kilometres apart – the larger 1 belongs to Russia, the smaller 1 to Alaska.
In October 2022 2 Russians utilized the direct neighbourhood: a tiny boat sailed from Russia to the Alaskan island of Saint Lawrence to avoid being called to the army and sent to war with Ukraine.
Not the first historical gathering in Alaska
It is about this war Trump and Putin now want to talk personally in Anchorage, but without the participation of Ukraine, which was attacked by Russia. Putin will not be the first abroad leader to be accepted by the U.S. president in Anchorage: in September 1971 the Emperor of Japan Hirohito landed here – in this function on his first abroad trip. After gathering president Richard Nixon, he went to London, Bonn and Paris.
Now Putin could not go to the United Kingdom, Germany or France – in all 3 countries policies wanted by an global arrest warrant would most likely be detained and issued to the global Criminal Court in The Hague. The United States does not recognise this tribunal, so Putin has nothing to fear in Alaska.
From Washington's perspective, the largest U.S. state seems so distant that it almost feels Russian in there: Donald Trump said to journalists in the White home this week, "I'll meet Putin, I'm flying to Russia on Friday".
