Alaska Sets Stage for Trump-Putin Meeting

August 14, 2025
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It’s easy to imagine Putin making the argument during his meetings with Trump that, ‘Well, look, territories can change hands. We gave you Alaska. Why can’t Ukraine give us a part of its territory?’

Former British Ambassador Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, on the symbolism of President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting in Alaska on Friday.

Why It Matters: This will be the first meeting between the two leaders during President Trump’s second term as president.

  • The two leaders previously met in Europe in 2018 and then again at a G20 meeting in Japan in 2019.
  • President Putin will become the first Russian leader to visit Alaska. Alaska has served as a site for other meetings with world leaders — as the location served as convenient stopovers for longer trips. In 1971, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito became “the first reigning monarch in Japan’s long history to step on foreign soil” when he met with President Nixon in Alaska (video). Pope John Paul II met President Reagan in Alaska in 1984 (video). China’s President Xi scheduled a stopover in Alaska in 2017 to meet with Alaska Governor Bill Walker (video).
  • The meeting between President Trump and President Putin will take place at the largest military site in Alaska: “The base was crucial to countering the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and it still hosts key aircraft squadrons that intercept Russian aircraft when they fly into U.S. airspace.” (AP)
  • Interesting Context: When Russia sold Alaska to the United States in 1868 (for $7.2 million dollars or about $156,000,000 in today’s money), the Soviets needed the money in part because of a war waged years earlier in the same location as the current war between Russia and Ukraine. (Great photo here.)

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Image Credit: U.S. Dept. of the Interior

by Jenna Lee, Founder of SmartHER News

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