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Russian President Vladimir Putin will become the first Russian leader to visit Alaska, the state sold by the Russian Empire to the United States in 1867, when he meets with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday, Aug. 15, to discuss Ukraine and bilateral relations.
Putin plans to travel to the U.S. for the first time in many years, with his last U.S. visit being to New York in 2015 to attend the United Nations General Assembly. While past Soviet and Russian leaders, including Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Dmitry Medvedev, have visited the U.S., Putin will make history as the first Russian leader to visit Alaska.
The White House is also weighing whether to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the meeting, NBC News reported, citing a senior U.S. official. While no decision has been made, a trilateral meeting remains "absolutely" possible.
Alaska was discovered in 1732 by two explorers named Mikhail Gvozdev and Ivan Fedorov, and merchants began developing the region in subsequent years. Initially, Russian territory, the region provided income to the Russian state through the fur trade.
The Russian-American Company was established in the region in 1799.
During the Crimean War, it became clear that the cost of managing and protecting such a distant and geopolitically sensitive region was heavier than potential profits.
The idea of selling Alaska was first proposed in 1857 by Prince Konstantin Nikolayevich, brother of Russian Tsar Alexander II. Later, with Tsar Alexander II's approval, Alaska was sold to the U.S. on March 30, 1867. The U.S. paid Russians $7.2 million at that time for approximately 1,518,800 square kilometers of territory. This amount is noted to be worth more than $150 million in today's value.
The U.S. purchased Alaska because it evaluated it as having both strategic and economic potential. Then-U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward of that period was criticized by many Americans for causing the purchase of distant and seemingly useless land that appeared to be nothing but ice, and this situation was called "Seward's Folly."
Years later, when it emerged that Alaska was valuable for gold, oil, natural gas, fishing and strategic purposes, these criticisms gave way to comments calling it "America's most profitable land purchase."
The distance from U.S.-owned Alaska across the Bering Strait to Russia's Chukotka region is 86 kilometers. Here, the border between the two countries passes through the middle of a 3.8-kilometer (2.36 miles) distance between Russia's Big Diomede Island (Ratmanov) and the U.S.-owned Little Diomede Island.
This region, forming the Russia-U.S. border, is an important point where the time zone changes.
The "International Date Line" passes through here. During the Putin-Trump summit to take place on Friday, within U.S. borders, calendars in Russia just next to the border will show Saturday.
Despite this short distance between the two countries, the time difference is 21 hours.
The White House may invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Alaska, where Putin and Trump will meet to discuss ending the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, according to NBC News.
NBC News reported, citing a senior U.S. official and unnamed people briefed on internal discussions, that the issue is being discussed but there are no finalized plans for a visit by the Ukrainian president, and that whether Zelenskyy would be in Alaska for meetings remains unclear but "absolutely" possible.
"Everyone is very hopeful that it would happen," the report said, citing the senior US official.
A senior White House official said Trump remained open to the idea of a trilateral meeting involving Putin and Zelenskyy.
"Right now, the White House is focusing on planning the bilateral meeting requested by President Putin," the senior White House official added, according to the report.
The meeting will be the first face-to-face meeting between sitting Russian and U.S. presidents since June 2021, when Putin met then-U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva, Switzerland.
On Saturday, European leaders welcomed Trump's efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war but reiterated the need that a solution to the ongoing armed conflict must protect both Kyiv and Europe's "vital security interests."
"The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine," the statement added.
Putin told journalists after meeting his Emirati counterpart, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Moscow on Thursday that he has nothing against a trilateral meeting including Zelenskyy, but reaffirmed the need to create the necessary conditions for such talks.
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