The presidents of the United States and Russia, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, will meet this Friday to negotiate the end of the Ukraine War in an Alaska Air Base, a state that for 100 years was Russian territory and that passed to Washington in 1867 by an agreement that in Moscow is seen as an infamous memory.
Trump, known for his unconventional style in diplomacy and his aspiration to the Nobel Peace Prize, stars in another unexpected turn when meeting for the first time with Putin since 2019, at the Elmendorf-Richardson Air Base, a key installation during the Cold War to counteract the extinct Soviet Union.
Putin seeks to highlight another historical chapter between the two countries: cooperation between Soviet and Americans to face the Nazi threat during World War II. The meeting will be held near the tombs of Soviet pilots fallen in that conflict.
The base is located in Anchorage, the capital of Alaska, a city with less than 300,000 inhabitants on the shores of the North Pacific, which lives its last summer days with long periods of light, waiting for the arrival of the official Russian airplanes and the Air Force One.
The inhabitants try to stay out of negotiations that many expect does not affect them, although rumors circulate on a possible Russian agreement with respect to the rare and strategic minerals of the region.
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Alaska was Russian territory for a century, but the indigenous resistance and the Crimean War (1853-1856), which ruined the finances of the Russian Empire, ended their imperialist aspirations in America.
To cover the debts of that conflict, Russia sold Alaska in 1867 to the United States for just 7 million dollars (about 100 million adjusted by inflation), since maintaining the territory ceased to be profitable after the collapse of skins trade, its main interest in the area.
The sale, which culminated in the incorporation of Alaska as a US state in 1959, is seen by some Russian nostalgic as a great loss. However, Putin, passionate about history, has joked on occasion: “Why were we going to love her? It’s very cold.”
The current Kremlin chief will be the first Russian president to step on Alaska, although without clear intentions to end the large -scale invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022, a conflict that Trump wishes to resolve in his search for the Nobel.
The Russian delegation that accompanies Putin includes, in addition to the Foreign and Defense Ministers, the Minister of Finance, Anton Siluanov, and the representative for Foreign Economic Cooperation, Kirill Dmitriev.
This indicates that Putin aims to take advantage of Trump to promote economic agreements that benefit Russia, a country affected by the debt of war and isolation due to western sanctions.
Perhaps Putin does not want to repeat the mistakes of the past, when the Crimean War forced Russia to abandon their imperialist dreams and open the way to an emerging American power.
With EFE Information
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