Trump, Putin to Meet in Alaska
US military personnel stationed there also run intercept missions routinely against Russian aircraft flying in to enter American
. President Trump has been aggressively pushing for a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv since his second term in office. Photo/Courtesy
By Juliet Jerotich
The meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will be at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, said a White House statement on Wednesday.
The summit is scheduled to be held on Friday and will deal with putting an end to the ongoing war in Ukraine, which has been going on for more than three years. It will be the first-ever bilateral summit between Trump and Putin after their meeting in 2018 in Helsinki.
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, is a consolidation of Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson Army base. The two bases became one in 2010 to create a joint command center.
The base serves as headquarters for a variety of significant US military operations within the region, such as the Alaska Command, which oversees American forces in the state, and the Alaskan NORAD Region, which has aerospace control and early warning abilities.
US military personnel stationed there also run intercept missions routinely against Russian aircraft flying in to enter American airspace near Alaska. The intercepts are made visually or by electronic means contacting the Russian pilots.
Russia invaded Ukraine on a massive scale in February 2022. President Trump has been aggressively pushing for a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv since his second term in office. Despite months of diplomatic initiatives, however, no substantive breakthrough has been achieved.
The Alaska summit is a high-risk opportunity for both leaders. For Trump, it is a chance to demonstrate progress towards ending one of the world’s most perilous wars. For Putin, it is a chance for an international platform on which to present Russia’s position directly in front of America without the use of middlemen.
Even if expectations are low, the choice of Alaska as the location recognizes strategic and symbolic considerations. The location highlights the geographical closeness of the two nations close to the Bering Strait and military readiness of the US in this area.
The outcome of the meeting could have ramifications not just for the fate of the conflict in Ukraine but also for the broader US-Russia dynamic, which has been fractious due to years of geopolitical rivalries and distrust.
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