‘War criminal falling from the sky’: Why Alaskans aren’t happy to host Putin

Directly across the street from the civic centre in downtown Anchorage, where the world’s media awaits Saturday’s meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the homely Dark Horse cafe is doing a roaring trade.

On Thursday, the door rarely stops opening. All the better for mum-and-daughter operators Karin and Jessica Johnson, who have an “I Stand With Ukraine” banner affixed to the cafe’s patio.

“Everyone knows where we stand,” says Jessica, a third-generation born-and-raised Alaskan.

“It’s just a little disturbing,” says mum Karin. “I just don’t think it’s honourable to leave the people of Ukraine hanging, and to not have Ukraine involved in any discussions about peace.”

Jessica says she doesn’t know any locals who are excited about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit. “I don’t trust his intentions, and I just don’t know how I feel about having an [alleged] war criminal in my state.” Karin says the US has elected a convicted criminal, so perhaps it’s not a surprise.

In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin for the alleged war crime of taking Ukrainian children into Russia.

The meeting is, arguably, the biggest thing to happen in this city of fewer than 300,000 people since the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964, save perhaps Richard Nixon welcoming Japan’s Emperor Hirohito to the US here in 1971.

That event, the first time a reigning Japanese monarch had set foot on foreign soil, was broadcast around the world, as Trump and Putin’s encounter inevitably will be.

But there is much more riding on this. At stake is the future of the Ukrainian people, and the world’s tolerance for a Russian campaign of aggression that has appalled the global community for years. Now, the instigator of that war will come face to face with the man who believes he is uniquely positioned to end it – but who has, so far, failed at the task.

The one-day summit at Elmendorf Air Force Base is a massive logistical undertaking on short notice.

‘I want Trump to look into Putin’s eyes, see his soul and realise that he can’t be negotiated with.’

Julian Hayda, Razom for Ukraine

Anchorage is groaning under the weight of the attention (on top of high-season tourism); hotels are full, hire cars are impossible to get, and flights to this isolated part of the world are more expensive than usual.

The US president is playing down expectations, describing the encounter as a means of gauging Putin’s intent. “This meeting sets up the second meeting. It’s like a chess game,” he said on Friday (AEST). The second meeting, involving Zelensky, would be where details of the “give and take” are thrashed out.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘divvy things up’, but to a certain extent it’s not a bad term,” Trump said. But there was a one in four chance the first meeting would fail, he said, in which case he had warned of “severe consequences”.

At the Dark Horse, I meet Ostap Yarysh and Julian Hayda from the Ukrainian charity Razom (“Together”) for Ukraine. They have been putting up signs around Anchorage and are heading to a number of protests planned for the coming 24 hours. While they are sceptical about the summit, they hope it may lead Trump to finally conclude Putin is not serious about ending the war, or that Trump might insist upon the return of an estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.

In 2001, George W. Bush famously said he looked Putin in the eye and “was able to get a sense of his soul”.

“I want Trump to look into Putin’s eyes, see his soul and realise that he can’t be negotiated with,” Hayda says.

The Ukrainian activists also note we are speaking on August 14, the anniversary of the 1784 Awa’uq massacre, when Russian fur traders killed hundreds of indigenous Alaskans near Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska. Some estimates put the death toll in the thousands.

At their closest point in the Bering Strait, mainland Alaska and the Russian Far East are less than 100 kilometres apart. Of course, these are largely uninhabited areas in some of the harshest conditions on the planet. Alaska was Russian territory until 1867, when it was sold to the US. It didn’t become a state until 1959.

“People here learn their history,” says Hayda. “They learn that this was a Russian colony. They know what kind of atrocities Russia has previously committed, especially to the indigenous population here.

“To see that happening again in 2025 is, I think, deeply personal to a lot of Alaskans, and it’s resonant in a way that it isn’t to many Americans. So to have this [alleged] war criminal fall from the sky in the middle of Anchorage is not lost on people.”

Others are not so sure. I speak to Gunnar Knapp, an emeritus economics professor at the University of Alaska, who wrote a letter to the Anchorage Daily News condemning Trump’s decision to welcome “this evil man” to US territory and give him “a propaganda platform for his lies”.

Knapp said he would usually be excited to see Alaska host a meeting between the president and a world leader. “Normally, Alaskans thrive on this kind of attention,” he says. “It’s kind of a big deal.”

This time, there are protests and unease. But Knapp is not convinced most people care. He estimates the number of people who know much about Russia’s history in Alaska, or think about it, is “tiny”. And Alaska is a solid red state; it voted for Trump three times, and its two senators and one congressman are all Republicans.

“There’s going to be a very large number of Alaskans who think: ‘Wow, Trump, our hero, is coming to the state.’ They are clueless about the broader international context and risks of this meeting,” says Knapp.

Meanwhile, Knapp’s European friends are contacting him about their fear of what may transpire in his home town. “This is not what I welcome Alaska being known for,” he says.

On Thursday afternoon, up to 1000 pro-Ukraine, anti-Trump protesters lined a busy highway intersection just south of the city centre, waving Ukrainian flags, holding provocative signs and eliciting a chorus of honks from passing motorists.

Tasha Boyer Dunbar, 27, born and raised in Alaska, said there was nothing to be gained from the meeting, and feared it would only exacerbate the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. “I’m frankly surprised that it is happening at all,” she said.

Dunbar carried a sign bearing the faces of Trump and Putin with the kicker: “I can see fascists from my house.” That references a famous line from Saturday Night Live mocking former Alaska governor and vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin.

Several attendees at the rally even feared Trump would sell Alaska back to Russia, saying they had seen the rumour spreading on internet forums.

There are pockets of Russian influence in Alaska, particularly in light of what author David Ramseur calls the “melting of the ice curtain” that accompanied the end of the Cold War. At the St Innocent Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Anchorage, Russian native and US resident Mark Kalashnikov told the Associated Press he knew many people who had suffered in the war.

“It is reassuring to see there is at least some communication happening,” he said of the summit. “We are trying to do what is asked of us, to come together as a community locally and to pray.”

Restaurant worker Becky Morris, whose downtown diner Anchorage Pel’meni serves Russian dumplings with American trimmings, was disappointed she wouldn’t get to see Trump or Putin while they are at the air base.

She said the Russian leader was not just going to “give up [on Ukraine] and go home”. But she was hopeful for a settlement that did not compel Ukraine to surrender too much land. “I just want the war to stop,” she said. “That’s all I hope for.”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.