Russian commentators and officials bragged about the perceived coup of Vladimir Putin getting a summit in Alaska Friday with President Donald Trump over a potential Ukraine War ceasefire.
It’s the first time that a Russian leader has been invited to American soil outside of the United Nations since 2007, and comes without the Kremlin having made any apparent concessions amid its war of aggression in Ukraine.
Just days before the summit was announced, Trump was sharing his anger at Putin’s consistent bombing of Ukraine and threatened to increase sanctions on Russia. The sudden decision to meet with the Russian leader prompted European and Ukrainian officials to scramble to respond to the new arrangement.
One of the top interlocutors between the Kremlin and the Trump administration is Russia’s special economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who argued that the decision to have the meeting in Alaska was symbolically significant. The U.S. bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, roughly two cents per acre.
“Born as Russian America — Orthodox roots, forts, fur trade — Alaska echoes those ties and makes the U.S. an Arctic nation,” he said on X.
Konstantin Malofeyev is a billionaire who the Obama administration sanctioned for funding separatists in Ukraine backed by the Kremlin and interfering in elections in a number of countries.
He claimed Alaskans “respectfully remember their Russian past and their Orthodox present.”
Alexander Kots, a war correspondent supportive of the Kremlin, said in his Telegram channel that “The meeting in Alaska has every chance to become historic.”
“That is, of course, if the West does not try to pull off another scheme,” he added.
Meanwhile, analysts in the West urged caution. Michael McFaul served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration.
“Trump has chosen to host Putin in a part of the former Russian Empire,” he said on X. “Wonder if he knows that Russian nationalists claim that losing Alaska, like Ukraine, was a raw deal for Moscow that needs to be corrected.”
“The symbolism of holding the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska is horrendous — as though designed to demonstrate that borders can change, land can be bought and sold,” said King’s College London Russian Politics professor Sam Greene, according to The Washington Post. “Never mind that mainstream Russian discourse maintains a claim that Alaska should be returned to Russia.”
While Czar Alexander II offered up Alaska for sale, Putin has taken Ukrainian territory by force via the unlawful annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent full-scale invasion of the country in 2022, when he illegally claimed to annex four regions of Ukraine.
Russia analysts told The Post that it’s unlikely that the Kremlin has left behind any of its goals for Ukraine, such as demilitarization, the replacement of the current regime with a pro-Russia one, and for Ukraine not to join NATO.
A senior fellow with the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, Tatiana Stanovaya, said Trump “didn’t want to fall into confrontation with Russia.”
“Trump himself said that further sanctions probably wouldn’t force Putin to change his mind. We could see from these signals that Trump could be open to a new attempt, and he did so just days before the end of his ultimatum,” Stanovaya added.
The deputy head of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Janis Kluge, told The Post that Putin’s proposal is “part of the war.”
“It’s just a temporary ceasefire in exchange for land,” said Kluge. “It is meant to give Putin an advantage in the longer run against Ukraine and the West.”
A former top Kremlin official told the paper that Russia appeared willing to compromise, as it indicated that it was ready for a ceasefire.
“Politically, it is easier [for the Kremlin] to continue the war until Ukraine’s final collapse than to make peace,” the anonymous official said. “This is why they are clinging on to the idea that there needs to be a temporary but not permanent truce — and then in the meantime [Ukrainian] elections can be conducted.”
While the Kremlin has pushed for a friendly regime in Kyiv, Ukrainians have often demonstrated their wish for free and fair elections and a democratic future as part of the European Union.
Pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov said, “Russian troops are not going to make any step backward,” as part of a deal to reach a ceasefire.
However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that he wouldn’t agree to any deal that included handing over territory to Russia, saying Ukraine’s constitution prohibited it.
“There are no guarantees,” Markov added, according to The Post. “But there are also no guarantees that Ukraine won’t begin the war again.”
He went on to say that Russia’s top goal during the summit was to paint Europe and Ukraine as impediments to Trump’s dream of achieving a peace deal.
“Russia hopes that Trump will finally become sensible and see that Zelensky is the main reason for the war that is happening now, and that the second reason for the war is European leaders … and that they are his enemies too,” said Markov, adding that Trump will realze that “Putin is one of his few good political friends.”
