President Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for Russian President Valdimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson last week, while demonstrators on the park strip in Anchorage flew a huge Ukrainian flag high.
Several hundred participants in the Aug. 15 rally also carried numerous Ukrainian flags of varied sizes, plus signs critical of the war and Trump.
Trump had come to the summit in Alaska with the announced intent of getting a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine, even threatening “severe consequences” and more tough sanctions if Putin did not agree to stop its attack.
But Trump backed down and said later that instead he wanted a peace agreement based on Ukraine giving up territory to Russia.
Then on Monday, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accompanied by a delegation of NATO and European leaders, met with Trump at the White House for several hours.
The entourage included leaders from Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Finland, all of whom have rallied to support Ukraine. Their effort, they have said, is to make sure the meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump goes much better than the one in February where Trump berated the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office.
After the meeting, Trump reportedly called Putin on the phone, but offered no details about what was discussed. The New York Times, however, reported that Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy aide to Putin, said officials agreed to appoint more senior negotiators to direct talks between Russia and Ukraine.
According to the New York Times, any details of progress toward an end to the war were scarce.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said in a statement on social media that she was cautiously optimistic that the Alaska meeting yielded some level of progress.
“Ukraine must be part of any negotiated settlement and must freely agree to its terms as we seek an end to the violent, unlawful war being waged against it,” she said.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, spoke on Face the Nation after the meeting – however he did not speak specifically about the Alaska summit, but rather about national defense issues.
“The number of times that the Russians and Chinese are doing joint strategic bomber task forces in our airspace and joint naval task forces in our EEZ, in our waters – it’s happening on a regular basis now,” Sullivan said. “It’s unprecedented. They don’t do joint operations anywhere else on America’s borders. That’s for sure.”
But others had different thoughts about Trump’s meeting with Putin.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, also speaking on Face the Nation, called Putin a war criminal who intentionally murders civilians and kidnaps children. Murphy said Putin gave up nothing while getting everything he wanted after being invited to the United States.
“War criminals are not normally invited to the United States of America,” Murphy said.
National Public Radio (NPR) also reported that guests at the Hotel Captain Cook in downtown Anchorage found documents left on one of the hotel’s public printers of the Trump-Putin meeting agenda, including precise locations, meeting times and phone numbers of U.S. government employees and Russian state leaders.
According to national reporting, the printed documents also revealed that Trump intended to hold a lunch to honor Putin, which was titled “POTUS to President Putin, American Bold Eagle Statue.” On the menu was a green salad, filet mignon and halibut Olympia, with Crème Brûlée for dessert.
The three-course luncheon “in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin,” however, was ultimately canceled.
