President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin landed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Friday morning, with Putin arriving from Moscow by way of a refueling stop in Magadan in Russia’s Far East.
Trump was accompanied aboard Air Force One by senior adviser Dan Scavino, part of the president’s close-knit team traveling to Alaska for the summit. Others on Air Force One include Monica Crowley, as earlier reported by Must Read Alaska.
The two leaders are meeting at the base to negotiate a potential end to the Ukraine conflict, now in its fourth year. Trump has said his primary goal is securing a ceasefire, although he has also signaled willingness to discuss possible “land swapping” as part of a settlement framework.
The summit schedule includes a private one-on-one meeting with translators, followed by expanded talks involving members of each leader’s delegation. The day will conclude with a joint press conference. Discussions are set to begin around 11:30 am local time and wrap up later the same day.
Also on the schedule is a meeting between Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the president, with the likely topic being the gasline that both are committed to building from the Arctic.
A rally in support of the president’s efforts for peace is set to begin at the Midtown Mall, on the corner of Seward Highway and Northern Lights Blvd.
Air Force One is officially wheels down at Joint Base Elmendorf in Anchorage, Alaska pic.twitter.com/neVcTFdjJj
On Aug. 15, 1935, two of America’s most famous figures — humorist Will Rogers and aviation pioneer Wiley Post — were killed when their small plane crashed near Utqiaġvik, then known as Barrow.
Rogers, 55, was a celebrated writer, stage performer, and social commentator whose wit and wisdom made him one of the most beloved public figures of his era. Post, 36, was a record-setting pilot best known for being the first to fly solo around the world and for his high-altitude flight research.
The pair were on an aerial tour of Alaska in Post’s experimental Lockheed Orion-Explorer, which had been fitted with pontoons for water landings. On that foggy August afternoon, their plane went down just after takeoff from Walakpa Bay, a short distance southwest of Barrow.
The tragedy stunned the nation. Rogers was mourned as the country’s ambassador of good will. He had starred in over 70 films, wrote a syndicated newspaper column, and was a national figure for his sharp commentary on American life. At the time of his death, he was 55 and was at the height of his popularity.
Post was remembered as a fearless innovator in aviation. In Alaska, the crash site became a landmark, and both men are honored with memorials in Utqiaġvik.
Their final flight 90 years ago today is a memorable page in Alaska’s aviation history, in a state known for having the highest number of private planes per capita and more pilots per capita than any other state.
The stage is set in Anchorage for today’s high-stakes summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, with both leaders now en route to Alaska. Here are some news nuggets from the past few hours:
Monica Crowley, Chief of Protocol of the United States since May 2025 in the second Trump administration, is aboard Air Force One traveling with the president and his team as they headed north for the meeting.
Monica Crowley aboard Air Force One.
Putin, meanwhile, made a final refueling stop in Magadan, a Russian city on the Sea of Okhotsk in the country’s far east. There, he toured a local factory, met young hockey players, and laid flowers at a memorial honoring U.S.-Soviet cooperation during World War II. Magadan has been a sister city of Anchorage since 1991. In 2023, the Anchorage Assembly voted to suspend the sister city relationship due to the Russian government’s actions in Ukraine.
Reports say Trump plans to greet Putin on the tarmac when the Russian leader’s aircraft touches down in Anchorage around 11 am local time. That report comes from British news sources. It has not been reported where Putin’s plane will land, but it is likely to land at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and be positioned in the South Park area.
Trump was asked about a “land swap” concept, where Ukraine and Russia could exchange territory as part of a peace compromise. Trump said, “I’d have to let Ukraine decide.” Russia currently occupies nearly 114,500 square kilometers, about 19% of Ukraine, according to open-source battlefield maps, including Crimea and swaths of eastern and southeastern territory. Ukraine President Zelenskyy insists Ukraine will never recognize Russian control over its land; most nations recognize its 1991 borders.
The Russian delegation has brought both symbolism and political trolling to Anchorage. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Anchorage wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “CCCP,” the acronym for the Soviet Union, a gesture widely interpreted as a jab at the United States. Lavrov wore the shirt in public and conducted media interviews in it ahead of today’s talks.
Some Russian journalists in Anchorage are staying in makeshift quarters inside the lobby of the Alaska Airlines Center at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Instead of hotel rooms, they have been given small cots — two per cubicle and their room walls are curtains. Meanwhile, the Lakefront Anchorage Hotel is reported to be packed with Russian officials and staff.
Among other sightings: Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, was spotted dining at Jens’ Restaurant in Midtown Anchorage. And five members of the Russian entourage were seen at a Walmart purchasing vodka, Johnnie Walker Black, and Heineken.
With hours to go before the summit, we’ll provide more updates throughout the day at Must Read Alaska.
Regional carrier Ravn Alaska has ceased flight operations across the state, according to a message posted Thursday on the company’s website.
“We appreciate the years of service we were able to provide to Alaska communities,” the statement reads. “While we are no longer operating flights in Alaska, we’re grateful for the trust you placed in us during our time serving the region.” The company offered no further explanation for the shutdown.
For decades, Ravn Alaska served as a lifeline between many rural and urban communities, transporting passengers, mail, and cargo across a vast network. But the airline has struggled in recent years.
In 2023, Ravn filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a move attributed in part to the lingering financial damage from pandemic-era policies and the unionization of pilots.
The challenges deepened in February 2024, when the company laid off about 130 employees — more than a third of its workforce. CEO Rob McKinney departed soon after, and the airline brought in Southern California businessman Tom Hsieh to lead the company.
As of Thursday, Ravn’s website contained only the closure announcement, with no mention of future plans, other than saying the company was folded into New Pacific Airways, a company that is trying to launch Boeing 757 service in the Lower 48 and internationally.
On Friday, Anchorage will be the center of the world’s attention as President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a summit that could recalibrate US–Russia relations for years to come.
SUVs will lumber through the streets, security perimeters will stretch for blocks, and the world’s media will be watching Alaska, as diplomats, possibly including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.
You may even spot Sean Hannity walking in downtown Anchorage, as Americans for Prosperity’s Regina Wright did on Thursday.
Regina Wright and Sean Hannity near the Fifth Avenue Mall on Thursday afternoon, the evening before the historic peace summit at JBER. Hannity is in Anchorage covering President Donald Trump and Russia President Vladimir Putin’s visit.
It’s not the first time Aug. 15 has carried historic weight for Alaskans. Eighty years ago to the day, the Last Frontier was listening to a very different kind of news: The end of the deadliest war in human history.
On Aug. 15, 1945, radios across the territory crackled with the voice of President Harry S. Truman announcing Japan’s surrender.
In Anchorage, church bells rang, sirens wailed, and spontaneous parades filled the streets.
Cannery whistles blew in coastal towns, children banged pots and pans, and service members in uniform embraced strangers. For Alaskans — some of whom had lived under the shadow of war since Japanese forces occupied Attu and Kiska in 1942 — it was a day of relief, joy, and remembrance for the thousands who never came home.
Alaska’s wartime role had been outsized for such a sparsely populated place. The Aleutian campaign was the only instance of foreign occupation of US soil in the 20th Century.
The Alaska Territorial Guard, made up largely of Alaska Natives, had patrolled thousands of miles of coastline. The construction of the Alaska Highway and vast military airfields transformed the territory into a critical strategic link between North America and Asia.
Located on the site of today’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Elmendorf Field was a key hub for Alaska during World War II. It was a primary air logistics and staging center for the Aleutian Islands Campaign, supporting the transport of men and equipment to the islands and later air operations against the Kurile Islands.
The base also provided crucial defense for Alaska, particularly after the 1942 Japanese bombing of Dutch Harbor, with Fort Richardson commanding the Army’s defensive operations.
Elmendorf’s Alaska Air Depot handled aircraft maintenance, supply distribution, and cold-weather equipment testing for the 11th Air Force. Additionally, its location facilitated the transport of supplies to the Soviet Union through the Allied Lend-Lease program.
VJ Day — Victory over Japan — marked the turning point from wartime sacrifice to peacetime rebuilding. Soldiers began returning through Alaskan ports and airfields. War industries shifted focus. The military presence established during the war became permanent, shaping Alaska’s path to statehood in 1959.
World War II triggered a population boom in Alaska, drawing thousands of servicemembers and civilians to the territory, many of whom stayed after the war. The population nearly doubled from 72,000 in 1940 to 129,000 in 1950, with Anchorage growing from 3,000 to 47,000 and Fairbanks from 4,000 to nearly 20,000. While some military bases closed, others expanded, and the military population surged from about 500 to 22,000 over the decade.
Now, in 2025, the stakes are again global. The Trump–Putin meeting will not mark the end of a war, but it may influence how the world navigates peace, rivalry, and cooperation in the years ahead.
From 1945’s joyful relief to 2025’s tense diplomacy, protests, and media frenzy, 80 years later Alaska has found itself — once again — on the front row of history on Aug. 15.
Author’s note: My late friend and colleague Jeff W. Hahn, professor of Political Scienc at Villanova University, initially published this insightful article in the Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway during WWII, 2007, edited by Alexander Dolitsky, Alaska-Siberia Research Center, Juneau, Alaska.
The purpose of this article is to place the story of cooperation along the Alaska-Siberia Lend-Lease Airway during WWII into a larger context — the development of Russian-American relations over time. Since 1917, relations between Russia and the United States have alternated between periods of competition and cooperation. My thesis is that whether relations have been cooperative or competitive has depended on the degree to which the leaders of the two sides have perceived that they have a common interest. This was clearly the case during WWII when the two countries allied in the face of Hitler’s aggression in Europe; the Lend-Lease cooperation was a particularly clear and dramatic example of that. At the time the memorial to Lend-Lease operation was unveiled in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Aug. 27, 2006, the two countries again found themselves cooperating in the face of another common enemy—this time, the threat of global terrorism.
Initial American reaction to Soviet Russia was hostile. In 1917, after the October Revolution in Russia, the U.S. joined other European countries in efforts to weaken the Bolshevik regime. They originally supported a “Cordon Sanitaire”intended to isolate the Bolshevik government diplomatically.
Author’s additional note: French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau is credited with the first use of the phrase as a metaphor for ideological containment. In March of 1919, he urged the newly independent border states that had broken away from Bolshevist Russia to form a defensive union and thus quarantine the spread of communism to Western Europe; he called such an alliance a cordon sanitaire. This is still probably the most famous use of the phrase, though it is sometimes used more generally to describe a set of buffer states that form a barrier against a larger, ideologically hostile state. According to historian André Fontaine, Clemenceau’s cordon sanitaire marked the real beginning of the Cold War; thus, it would have started in 1919 and not in the mid-1940s as most historians contend.
In fact, until 1933 the U.S. government refused to recognize the Communist government in Soviet Russia. In the 1930s, however, both countries increasingly found a common interest in their shared opposition to the emergence of fascism in Europe. From 1941 to 1945, they entered into an alliance against Nazi Germany and its Axis powers.
After 1945, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States continued to alternate between cooperation and competition. The period from the end of 1945 to about 1965 was a time of great hostility known as the beginning of the “Cold War”— cold only because actual military conflict did not occur. American policy, based on a perception of the Soviet Union as an expansionist power, was one of “containment.” The Soviet Union was seen as an imperialistic power whose communist ideology justified its global ambitions. Soviet expansion could only be deterred by the threat of countervailing power. Containment theory received concrete expression in Europe in the NATO alliance and was later extended to alliances in Asia and the Middle East. By 1965, the Soviet Union was encircled by these hostile alliances.
At the end of the 1960s, the initial phase of the Cold War was replaced by a new period of cooperation known as “détente.” Again, cooperation grew out of a common interest—this time, a shared desire to control the growth of nuclear weapons. Although the recognition of this common interest can be seen in the 1967 Non-Proliferation Treaty, détentereached its zenith with the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) of 1972. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) in particular was evidence that both sides accepted the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which is based on the assumption that the security of both sides depends on the ability of each to destroy the other. The other important result of détente, of course, was the political settlement in Europe known as the Helsinki Agreement, signed in 1975, which signaled an acceptance by all parties of a territorial status quo in Europe.
By the late nineteen seventies, however, cooperation was replaced once again by competition. First, the Carter administration (1976-1980) made human rights issues a priority in its foreign policy and accused the Soviet Union of violating them, pointing to the issue of Jewish emigration to the West in particular. It was when Ronald Reagan became the U.S. president in 1980, however, that relations became so confrontational that one could speak of a new “Cold War.” Going beyond human rights issues, Reagan condemned the communist Soviet Union as an “Evil Empire” and abandoned the SALT process of limiting arms, arguing instead that nuclear arms must be reduced to the levels established in the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Furthermore, Reagan insisted that the Soviet Union had forsaken détente by increasing its nuclear and conventional military forces. His response was to deploy a new generation of medium range missiles in Europe and to propose a comprehensive missile defense system known as the Satellite Defense Initiative (SDI) or “Star Wars.” By 1985, all negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States had ended.
Relations between the Soviet Union and the United States entered a new period of cooperation after Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985. Gorbachev adopted a new approach to Soviet foreign policy, which he called “New Thinking.” For Soviet-American relations, “New Thinking” applied to security meant that under Gorbachev’s leadership important agreements on reducing weapons could be achieved. The very first breakthrough on this issue came in 1987, when the two countries signed the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement (INF) eliminating all medium range missiles in Europe. This was followed by the Conventional Forces in Europe Agreement (CFE) in 1990, a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) in 1991, and other agreements on weapons.
Along with these remarkable achievements in the area of military relations, other issues that had been sources of conflict between Soviet Russia and the United States also began to find resolution. By 1989, the U.S.S.R. had withdrawn from Afghanistan. The Berlin wall came down in the same year and free elections in the communist nations of East Europe brought non-communist governments to power, for the most part without violence. Perhaps the most compelling evidence for the emergence of a new world order in which the Soviet Union would cooperate with the United States to preserve world peace was Soviet support at the United Nations for the use of force against Iraqi aggression in Kuwait. In short, by 1991, all the major issues of contention between the Soviet Union and the United States were ended. It seemed that a new era of cooperation was in place.
By the end of 1991, however, the U.S.S.R. had disintegrated into its fifteen constituent republics, the largest of which was the Russian Federation. What would this mean for Russian-American relations? At first, the cooperative relationship that had developed under Perestroika [economic restructuring] and Glasnost [freedom of expression and political openness] continued to characterize relations between post-communist Russia and the United States. President Yeltsin and his foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, seemed committed to a pro-western orientation. For one thing, they continued to support UN sanctions against Iraq. In the area of nuclear arms reduction, they joined with the U.S. and the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to sign a protocol for START I in Lisbon, Portugal in 1992, which would enable START I to be implemented by returning all nuclear weapons in the former Soviet republics to Russia. In January 1993, shortly before he left office, President George Walker Bush signed the START II agreement with President Yeltsin, calling for the reduction of nuclear weapons to half of their previous levels.
By the end of 1994, however, relations began once again to shift. In foreign policy, debate in Russia over whether continued cooperation with the West truly served Russian national interests was growing. Those arguing that American and Russian interests no longer coincided could point to a number of issues: American criticism of Russia’s actions in Chechnya in 1995; NATO expansion to the East including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1997; the use of NATO military forces against Serbia, first in Bosnia in 1994, and then in Kosovo in 1999; and growing differences over Russian relations with Iraq and Iran. As a result, although the U.S. Senate ratified START II in 1995, by 2000, the Russian Parliament had still refused to do so. Perhaps nothing made Russia more concerned about American intentions than the growing consensus in the U.S. government in support of the ballistic missile defense system, in violation of the 1972 ABM treaty. In short, by the time he left office on December 31, 1999, Yeltsin could accurately describe relations between East and West as a “Cold Peace.”
When Vladimir Putin became acting president of Russia on January 1, 2000, little was known about him or his views on foreign policy. The first sense of what direction he might take came even before his inauguration as president in May 2000, when as “acting president” he managed to achieve what Yeltsin could not: Duma ratification of START II (although with the condition that the ABM Treaty remain in force). This, coupled with his inaugural speech emphasizing the importance of economic growth and the need to integrate Russia’s economy into the global economy, suggested a return to a more pro-western orientation.
From the American side, the year 2000 was dominated by the race for president. Relations with Russia were not an important issue in the campaign. After taking office in January of 2001, the initial attitude of the Bush administration toward Russia was cool. Nevertheless, the administration’s general indifference toward Russia had begun to change, even before the events of September 11, 2001. During their first meeting in Slovenia in June 2001, Bush and Putin appeared to establish a warm personal relationship. As was reported by Frank Bruni, in “Leaders’ Words at First Meeting are Striking for Warm Tone,” New York Times, June 17, 2001, President Bush observed: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy… I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
After September 11, 2001, the dynamics of Russian-American relations completely changed to a better prospect. Once again, it is because of the perception of leaders on both sides that they have a common interest—this time in defeating the terrorism associated with radical Islamic fundamentalism.
Despite continuing differences on a number of issues, ranging from the sale of nuclear reactors to Iran and Russian criticism of the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, the fact is that today [2007], as in the past, Russian-American relations continue to depend on mutual perceptions of common interests. For now, at least, those common interests compel both sides to cooperate just as they did with the Lend-Lease partnership during World War II.
Author’s note: From 2014 to present, Russian-U.S. relations again entered the phase of the “Cold Peace” or the “Cold Tension” over the situation in Ukraine, including the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022.
Alexander Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and enrolled in the Ph.D. program in anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also lecturer in the Russian Center. In the USSR, he was a social studies teacher for three years and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He then settled first in Sitka in 1985 and then in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education and Yukon-Koyukuk School District from 1988 to 2006; and Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center from 1990 to 2022. From 2006 to 2010, Alexander Dolitsky served as a Delegate of the Russian Federation in the United States for the Russian Compatriots program. He has done 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky was a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, and Clipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions. He was a Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. Dolitsky has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka, Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia, Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers in Alaska, Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During World War II, Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East, Living Wisdom of the Russian Far East: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska, and Pipeline to Russia: The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in World War II.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, Alaska has seen a steady inflow of top-level administration officials, underscoring the state’s central role in the White House’s energy, security, and economic agenda. Much of it can be credited to US Sen. Dan Sullivan, who won commitments from the cabinet members when they were still nominees.
On his first day in office, Trump signed executive orders to lift what he called the “onerous lockdowns” of the Biden Administration, opening the door for expanded energy development, including oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A). From Day One, he singled out Alaska for special emphasis.
In early June, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin traveled north for a multi-day tour. They joined a high-level roundtable with energy stakeholders in Anchorage, toured the Trans-Alaska Pipeline at Prudhoe Bay, visited Utqiagvik (Barrow), and spoke at Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s sustainable energy conference.
Burgum pushed for faster permitting and new exploration on federal lands. Wright focused on boosting oil production and reviving the long-stalled Alaska LNG project. Zeldin championed regulatory rollbacks to speed North Slope development.
In April, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll traveled to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) and Fort Greely, participating in a simulated casualty recovery exercise with 11th Airborne Division soldiers at the Black Rapids Training Site.
Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll watches Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 11th Airborne Division conduct Air Assault training at Yukon Training Center, Alaska, April 23, 2025. US Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Mejia.
In May, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan “Raisin’” Cain visited Alaska at the invitation of Sen. Dan Sullivan, who routinely presses nominees to commit to visiting the 49th state. Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink visited JBER in July.
August brought multiple high-profile arrivals: Acting Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday attended the commissioning of the USS Coast Guard icebreaker Storis in Juneau and the Coast Guard Cutter Cunningham in Kodiak; Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Troy Edgar joined the Storis commissioning in Juneau.
Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was in Alaska for meetings on tribal sovereignty, Medicaid rules, and vaccine policy.
This week, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy arrived for meetings with state and local leaders. Turner traveled to Bethel to discuss affordable housing initiatives in rural and Native communities, while Duffy toured the Don Young Port of Alaska and spotlighted infrastructure projects, including port upgrades and highway improvements tied to energy exports.
Totaling them up, the list of presidential cabinet members is historic in nature, never before seen in Alaska in such a compressed timeframe.
All of these visits set the stage for Trump’s own arrival on Aug. 15, when he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at JBER for a summit on Ukraine peace talks — the highest-profile political meeting in Alaska in decades.
The administration’s sustained presence makes one thing clear: Under Trump, Alaska is no longer a fuel-stop state for cabinet members traveling abroad, but a front-line player in the push for American energy dominance and national security.
On the eve of Trump-Putin talks, what can we glean from Tucker Carlson’s interview with the Russian President? Dismissed by some as self promotion, the interview helps us understand the man, his view of history and the conflict—and Trump’s opportunity to change the world.
Putin presents a Russian-centric version of history, but he can’t sell one idea to the world and another to his countrymen—especially one wholely divorced from reality. Putin’s purpose is unification and his interview is calculated to unify the Russian and Ukrainian people by romanticizing their shared heritage and posing as the only deterrent against expansionist forces surrounding them.
Americans should perceive Ukraine’s war as a sectional conflict with parallels to our own Civil War. History rarely repeats itself in a precise replay, but is instructional. If Putin’s words and actions align and are viewed in the context of preserving his country–more so than Communist party power—then possibly Trump is at the threshold of global change.
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was reviled by the South. The philosophies that divided our nation were as irreconcilable as Communism and Democracy. Separatism and sovereignty, as in Ukraine, were the only perceived remedies to our southern states. But the South’s industrial capacity was inadequate to ensure its viability as a separate nation. Ethnically and culturally, as with Russia, the U.S. was extremely diverse. Prolonged war, death and destruction ensued on an unimaginable scale, pitting neighbor against neighbor. Intense force, not from a foreign invader but from within, was applied to both break us apart, and to keep us together as a nation—as with Ukraine today. And yet from the ashes of our war-torn country emerged a stronger, more unified nation.
What Americans on both sides of our Civil War fought and died for was a higher purpose— in the North’s case a moral one sustained by lasting principles such as freedom and equality. In the Ukraine conflict, these principles are expressed as national unity fueled by Communist ideology on the one hand, and democracy and self-determination on the other.
Throughout history, when U.S. foreign policy is divided along partisan lines, Americans have squandered opportunities for peace. Where we are united in a clear cause, we produce miracles. FDR crafted consensus from a keen sense of history; Reagan did; Trump can today.
If freedom is the cause and progress toward true democracy in Russia is Trump’s demand, it’s conceivable that Communism might, like slavery, be relegated to the ash heap of history.
The answer to this conflict, therefore, may be through unity, not separatism; through peace and not war; through autonomy for Ukraine within a protective–but progressively democratic–Russian state. The Russian people are ready for change. And rather than forever being a pawn in a two-fronted battle between warring ideologies, Ukraine can become that spark, that burning ember of light that shines a light from within a Russian nation of great people, who have tasted freedom. All Ukraine needs is a George Washington.
Before dismissing this as fantasy, note how far freedom has advanced under Perestroika. There is no turning back. Consider the possibility that fear of invasion—not the spread of Communist ideology—is the dominant driver of Russian foreign policy. President Kennedy noted our “mutual abhorrence of war” in his “Strategy of Peace” speech in 1963 and called for a re-examination of our nation’s views toward cold-war Russia. Some believe this initiative cost JFK his life.
Strong leadership and national defense is the best antidote to foreign invasion, and since WW II, the Communist party has been the Russian people’s only hope. If Trump can replace the hope of Communism with the hope America has delivered to its people, anything is possible.
Historically, Russia has been among the most war-ravaged regions on earth; it bore the brunt of Nazi atrocities in WW II, losing 2/3 of its manufacturing capacity and 20 million people. When Putin invokes Neo-Nazi rhetoric, he is speaking for an entire country who suffered unimaginable horrors by an expansionist ideology based on racial superiority. Americans fought as Russia’s allies against this evil. Today, what is needed are security assurances as Russia transitions to a freer country and legitimate party opposition.
What if the average Russian today does not perceive Communism as a moral principal worth dying for? What if Russians see the march of human progress and feel left behind? The Communist party has been effective at building and retaining enough power to repel foreign invasion, which is the over-arching purpose of every government. But what if security for the Russian people could be guaranteed in another way? What if Russia fundamentally trusts the U.S. even as they remain wary of Germany and NATO? If these are true, we cannot squander this opportunity. Our own Civil War, for all its ugliness, provides a roadmap to what the human spirit, aided no doubt by divine providence, can achieve.
America’s effectiveness in managing ethnic conflicts and border disputes in eastern Europe historically has been spotty. U.S. isolationism in 1917 and 1936 was ineffective in containing global agression, and the failure of President Wilson’s League of Nations exposed at that time our nation’s indifference to global policing. Arguably, the Marshall Plan stoked Russia’s fear that expansion minded Germany would survive and form an alliance with the U.S. In modern times, Presidential elections have produced dramatic flip-flops in foreigh policy. Thus, Russia may not perceive us as a reliable deterrant to aggression. Their distrust of NATO as lacking consistent and principled leadership is not irrational. Trump can bridge this distrust. Putin’s statement that “The West promised Russia that NATO would not expand eastward” may be unsubstantiated but is less revealing than the fact that Ukraine itself has never formally sought NATO membership.
While Putin’s assertion that “The fight is against Ukrainian neo-Nazism” is theatrics, it re-directs Russian and Ukrainian ire toward a perceived NATO-sponsored expansionism. Trump shares some of Putin’s skepticism on this topic and on the origins of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution and the sources of global interference in Ukrainian elections. He is no stranger to the underbelly of free elections and opposition politics that have plagued Ukraine.
Ukraine is above all resilient, having survived mass-scale suffering and suppression of human rights since at least the collapse of the Romanov Empire in 1917. Lenin immediately set about quashing independence movements in ethnically defined states, including Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia, Poland, and Lithuania. Under Soviet rule, Stalin’s nationalism imposed absolute control over everything: free speech, opposition politics, even expressions of love for the medieval Ukrainian state of Kievan Rusi’ and its language. Russian pride over collective suffering, however, is yielding to a new expectation of freedom and prosperity.
Putin’s reality is that he is killing his countrymen in a civil war that he can never entirely win. To most Russians, even victory is Pyrrhic, more likely to create lasting division and to split the country asunder. Zelensky’s problem is that he’s broke, and no country wants to finance an intermidable war with every prospect of escalating. Victory is equally hollow for Ukraine, through diminished free trade, border security and travel with Russia.
A more global reality is that democracy is messy and not esily transplanted. Building a free nation is complicated and dynamic– sudden and slow. But it is morally justified when accomplished of, by and for the people. However, our own history must admit that force was decisive in overcoming a great evil and holding our union together. In a similar way, Communism is an evil both holding the Russian people togethe and driving them apart.
Interestingly, Putin admits that “There’s a kind of civil war in Ukraine because Russians are shooting Russians. Ninty-percent of Ukrainians have Russian as their native language, and the culture of Russians and Ukrainians is common”. While not completely true, this statement seeks to portray the war as an internal conflict, not a global one. Outside political interference is the real cause—not the Russian and Ukrainian people. Putin needs Trump to forge a path through civil war.
Zelensky’s pro-democracy support rests largely on the principle of self-determination. Jeffersonian democracy and its roots in state sovereignty was the South’s validation on the eve of the Civil War. And yet, the federal compact implicit in the Constitution was binding upon the President, who held the advantage in armaments and manufacturing. Today, in Ukraine, that advantage is Putin’s, and his validation—his equivalent to our federal compact—is the Communist Party platform.
But Putin’s national purpose—Communism—is tenuous, always teetering on the brink of collapse. When Putin states that “Russia carefully treated the culture and religion of the nations that unified with the Russian Empire”, he is engaging in known deception, but perhaps signaling the basis for unification under a new policy. As Dylan wrote, he doesn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Putin knows that Russians long to be free.
We are witnessing in Ukraine today the arc of history, and the last gasp of a neighboring and great nation carved from diversity, forged into union by force, and sustained for 100 years by hope, but a false one—Communism. Putin’s interview may help lead his country out of civil war, and toward a stronger, brighter future—just as Lincoln did. And that future, with Ukraine as flag bearer, may look more like America than we now think possible. Trump thinks it’s possible, and may be the leader the world needs to make it so.
The author is majority owner of Alaska Gold Communications, the parent company of Must Read Alaska.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to meet President Donald Trump at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson on Aug. 15, in what is set to be one of the most closely watched diplomatic encounters of the year, and one of the most heavily guarded meetings on the planet.
Putin’s personal security during his Alaska visit will be jointly provided by Russian special services and the US Secret Service. Standard protocol for high-level international visits suggests that several elite units could be involved.
Among them are the Federal Security Service, whose Special Purpose Center includes the Alpha and Vympel units that often handle close protection for the Russian president abroad; the Federal Protective Service, which directly manages Putin’s security detail and coordinates foreign travel logistics; and the Main Directorate of Special Programs, a lower-profile agency that may handle secure communications and contingency planning.
These agencies typically integrate with the host country’s security arrangements, meaning they would coordinate closely with the Secret Service for the Anchorage summit. The exact scope of Russian operatives’ activity on US soil remains unconfirmed.
However, the skies are already busy ahead of the summit. Flight-tracking service FlightRadar24.com shows multiple Russian aircraft currently en route to Alaska, drawing global attention as some of the most-tracked flights in the world today. The site’s real-time map indicates at least several Russian government or military-associated jets heading toward the state, aviation enthusiasts monitoring their progress online.
Thursday morning, a Russian Illyusian aircraft was spotted departing Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Other Illlyusians can be seen on FlightRadar24 heading to Anchorage.
Russian llyusian aircraft en route from Moscow to Anchorage on Thursday, August. 15, 2025.
The combination of high-profile leaders, complex joint security operations, and visible military air traffic has fueled a sense of anticipation in Anchorage and beyond. For residents, the next 48 hours will bring an unprecedented level of global scrutiny, and the tightest security Alaska has ever seen.
Meanwhile, the mystery high-altitude balloon that has yet to be publicly identified but that was floating over Alaska last week ha now made its way into the Gulf of Alaska and is at 64,000 feet. Here’s its location:
