The Russian past of Alaska, where Trump and Putin will meet
Russian influence still endures in parts of the remote state on the northwest edge of the North American continent, which extends just a few miles from Russia.
When Danish explorer Vitus Bering first sailed through the narrow strait that separates Asia and the Americas in 1728, it was on an expedition for Tsarist Russia.
The discovery of what is now known as the Bering Strait revealed the existence of Alaska to the West — however Indigenous people had been living there for thousands of years.
Bering's expedition kicked off a century of Russian seal hunting, with the first colony set up on the southern Kodiak island.
In 1799, Tsar Paul I established the Russian-American Company to take advantage of the lucrative fur trade, which often involved clashes with the Indigenous inhabitants.
However the hunters overexploited the seals and sea otters, whose populations collapsed, taking with them the settlers' economy.
The Russian empire sold the territory to Washington for $7.2 million in 1867.
The purchase of an area more than twice the size of Texas was widely criticized in the U.S. at the time, even dubbed "Seward's folly" after the deal's mastermind, secretary of state William Seward.
Languages and churches
The Russian Orthodox Church established itself in Alaska after the creation of the Russian-American Company, and it remains one of the most significant remaining Russian influences in the state.
More than 35 churches, some with distinctive onion-shaped domes, dot the Alaskan coast, according to an organization dedicated to preserving the buildings.
Alaska's Orthodox diocese says it is the oldest in North America, and even maintains a seminary on Kodiak island.
A local dialect derived from Russian mixed with Indigenous languages survived for decades in various communities — particularly near the state's largest city Anchorage — though it has now essentially vanished.
However near the massive glaciers on the southern Kenai peninsula, the Russian language is still being taught.
A small rural school of an Orthodox community known as the "Old Believers" set up in the 1960s teaches Russian to around a hundred students.
Neighbors
One of the most famous statements about the proximity of Alaska and Russia was made in 2008 by Sarah Palin, the state's then-governor — and the vice-presidential pick of Republican candidate John McCain.
"They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska," Palin said.
While it is not possible to see Russia from the Alaskan mainland, two islands facing each other in the Bering Strait are separated by just 2.5 miles (four kilometers).
Russia's Big Diomede island is just west of the American Little Diomede island, where a few dozen people live.
Further south, two Russians landed on the remote St. Lawrence island — which is a few dozen miles from the Russian coast — in October, 2022 to seek asylum.
They fled just weeks after Putin ordered an unpopular mobilization of citizens to boost his invasion of Ukraine.
For years, the U.S. military has said it regularly intercepts Russian aircraft that venture too close to American airspace in the region.
However Russia is ostensibly not interested in reclaiming the territory it once held, with Putin saying in 2014 that Alaska is "too cold".
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Japan Times
2 hours ago
- Japan Times
American Nazis: The Aryan Freedom Network is riding high in Trump era
Wearing cargo shorts, flip-flops and a baseball cap shading his eyes from the sun, Dalton Henry Stout blends in easily in rural America. Except for the insignia on his hat. It bears the skull and crossbones of the infamous "Death's Head' SS units that oversaw Nazi Germany's concentration camps — and the initials "AFN,' short for Aryan Freedom Network, the neo-Nazi group Stout leads with his partner. From a modest ranch house in Texas, the couple oversee a network they say has been turbocharged by President Donald Trump's return to the White House. They point to Trump's rhetoric — his attacks on diversity initiatives, his hard-line stance on immigration and his invocation of "Western values' — as driving a surge in interest and recruitment. Trump "awakened a lot of people to the issues we've been raising for years,' Stout said. "He's the best thing that's happened to us.' While the Aryan Freedom Network and other neo-Nazi groups remain on the outermost edges of American politics, broadly regarded as toxic by conservatives and mainstream America, they are increasingly at the center of far-right public demonstrations and acts of violence, according to interviews with a dozen members of extremist groups, nine experts on political extremism and a review of data on far-right violence. Several trends have converged since Trump's re-election. Trump's rhetoric has galvanized a new wave of far-right activists, fueling growth in white supremacist ranks. Trump's pardons of January 6 rioters and a shift in federal law enforcement's focus toward immigration have also led many on the far right to believe that federal investigations into white nationalists are no longer a priority. And the boundaries of the far right itself are shifting. Ideas once confined to fringe groups like the Proud Boys — who helped lead the January 6 siege — are now more visible in Republican politics, from election denialism to rhetoric portraying immigrants as "invaders.' Trump's public support and pardons for far-right figures helped normalize those views, the researchers said. As the Make America Great Again movement has come to define the party's identity, the line separating the far right from mainstream conservatism has grown increasingly difficult to draw, they added. What was once extreme now blends more easily into the broader far-right, not because those extreme groups have changed, but because the terrain around them has, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a nonprofit that tracks hate speech and extremism. "A Proud Boy doesn't even seem that scary anymore because of the normalization process,' she said. That shift has coincided with a surge in white nationalist activity. White extremists are committing a growing proportion of U.S. political violence, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, a nonprofit research outfit that tracks global conflicts. In 2020, such groups were linked to 13% of all U.S. extremist-related demonstrations and acts of political violence, or 57 of the events ACLED tracked. By 2024, they accounted for nearly 80%, or 154 events. Trump has denied that he supports white extremism, and the White House rejects the notion that his rhetoric promotes racism. "President Trump is a president for all Americans and hate has no place in our country,' White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in response to questions for this story. "President Trump is focused on uniting our country, improving our economy, securing our borders, and establishing peace across the globe.' Fields also pointed to a significant rise in support for Trump among Black voters. In last year's election, his share of the Black vote nearly doubled from 2020 to about 15%. Trump has batted away accusations of racism. At a campaign rally last year, he declared, "I'm not a Nazi. I'm the opposite of a Nazi.' A few months earlier, he told an interviewer that he can't be racist because he has "so many Black friends." Even as he has made inroads with non-white voters, Trump has consistently drawn support from white nationalist and extremist groups while using racially divisive rhetoric. He promoted the false claim that Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, was not born in the U.S. In his 2024 campaign, he suggested immigrants commit violent crimes because "it's in their genes,' a remark condemned by many as racist. Stout said his group opposes violence. Yet the Aryan Freedom Network openly advocates preparing for a "Racial Holy War.' It promotes white superiority ideology, seeks to unify elements of the broader white nationalist movement and actively recruits former members of other extremist groups. Stout wears a shirt denoting the white nationalists' book The Turner Diaries on May 5. | REUTERS The Trump administration has scaled back efforts to counter domestic extremism, redirecting resources toward immigration enforcement and citing the southern border as the top security threat. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reduced staffing in its Domestic Terrorism Operations Section. The Department of Homeland Security has cut personnel in its violence prevention office. Some specialists in domestic terrorism say these moves could embolden extremists by weakening U.S. capacity to detect and disrupt threats. The DHS and FBI have defended the cuts, saying they remain committed to fighting domestic terrorism. The FBI said in a statement it allocates resources based on threat analysis and "the investigative needs of the Bureau,' and that it remains committed to investigating domestic terrorism. 'Racist royalty' In his first interview with any news organization, Stout met journalists in April at a restaurant in Hochatown, Oklahoma, a quiet town known for its hiking and fishing about an hour's drive north of their Texas home. He was joined by his partner, who goes by the name Daisy Barr. Stout says AFN is focused on staying within the law. "We got to watch our Ps and Qs,' he said. Then his tone turned apocalyptic: "And when the day comes, that will be the day — that's when violence will solve everything.' While he offered no timeline, researchers who study domestic extremism say the comment reflects a strategy among some far-right groups: operate within the law while openly predicting a moment of upheaval. The Aryan Freedom Network first drew national attention in 2021 after organizing a "White Unity' conference in Longview, Texas. By the following year, it was distributing flyers in cities across the country. One in Texas featured racist caricatures of Black Americans — one swinging from a street lamp amid rubble and an overturned car — alongside the caption: "At the current rate of decline what will America's major cities look like in ten years?' AFN also began staging protests, often targeting drag events and LGBTQ+ gatherings. Stout says the demonstrations were designed to attract recruits. Its conferences and annual "Aryan Fests' have become networking hubs for the far right, drawing attendees from groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist organizations, according to two individuals affiliated with those movements. Reuters was unable to independently verify the claim. The pseudoscientific notion of a superior white Aryan race — essentially Germanic — was a core tenet of Hitler's Nazi regime. AFN gatherings brim with Nazi memes: Swastikas are ritually set ablaze and chants of "white power' echo through the woods. AFN's website pays specific tribute to violent white supremacist groups of the past, including The Order, whose members killed a Jewish radio host in 1984. Two key members responsible for the killing were sentenced to lengthy prison terms and are now deceased. Stout's beliefs are rooted in the Christian Identity movement, which claims that white Europeans, not Jews, are the true Israelites of biblical scripture and therefore God's chosen people. Stout and Barr also claim that Black Americans, under Jewish influence, are leading a Communist revolution — an ideology that fuses racial supremacy with far-right conspiracy theories. Stout, 34, and Barr, 48, were born into self-avowed white supremacist families with deep ties to the Ku Klux Klan, infamous for its white robes, burning crosses and long history of racist violence, including decades of lynchings and terrorist campaigns against Black Americans. As a child, Stout said he attended Klan ceremonies and white nationalist youth camps. He recalls reading translations of SS training manuals from Nazi-era Germany. And while other girls were playing video games, Barr said she was wrapping torches in burlap strips, for secret KKK cross-burning ceremonies. Though they now identify as American Nazis, their ideology is anchored in the KKK and other white extremist groups. Their families are well known to historians of the movement. Stout's father, George Stout, was a "grand dragon' in the White Knights of Texas, a KKK offshoot. He declined to comment for this story. Barr's late father was a KKK "grand wizard' from Indiana who was sentenced to seven years in prison for holding two journalists at gunpoint. AFN requires members to use aliases; she chose "Daisy Barr' after the name of a female Klan leader of the 1920s who sold Klan robes and died in a car crash. One person familiar with the couple described their 2020 marriage as a union of "racist royalty.' They filed for divorce two years later, but Stout said the split was in name only — a legal move to shield their assets in case they faced civil rights lawsuits like those that once bankrupted the Klan and Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi group held liable in a 1999 civil suit for inciting violence. Stout and Barr declined to share membership numbers but said AFN now has nearly twice as many chapters as the 23 it claimed in early 2023. Trump "awakened a lot of people to the issues we've been raising for years,' Stout said. "He's the best thing that's happened to us.' | REUTERS The Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium, a private research group that monitors extremist movements, estimates AFN's members have grown to between 1,000 and 1,500. "We collect and record every event of theirs,' said TRAC researcher Muskan Sangwan. Some of the earliest chapters, including those in Texas, likely began with around 100 members each, Sangwan said, suggesting the group may have had roughly 200 members in its initial stages. Chris Magyarics, a senior researcher at the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy organization that monitors antisemitic harassment, said he was skeptical AFN was so big but said he had no independent data on its size. "The previous largest neo-Nazi group only had a couple of hundred,' he said, referring to the National Socialist Movement, which has been in steady decline. Despite the uncertainty over its numbers, AFN is on the radar screens of independent researchers. Jon Lewis, a research fellow specializing in domestic extremism at George Washington University's Program on Extremism, said the group has been "really popular' among far-right "accelerationists,' a term used by white supremacists who advocate violence to hasten a race war. Stout said his group has benefited from the decline of the Proud Boys following the Capitol attack. Once prominent for street clashes during the Trump administration, the Proud Boys have faced legal setbacks and public scrutiny since many of its members were convicted — and later pardoned by Trump — for their roles in the January 6 Capitol riots. The group describes its ideology as "Western chauvinism.' Critics say the group uses the term "Western' rather than "white' to veil its racism, a charge the Proud Boys' defenders deny. Stout described groups like the Proud Boys as "civic nationalists' — movements that draw in followers with patriotic rhetoric, then serve as stepping stones toward more overtly racist organizations like AFN or the Klan. "A lot of newbies, new people to the movement, join that type of movement before they join us,' Stout said. Weapons and race war Although Stout said the Aryan Freedom Network rejects violence, firearms and tactical training remain central to its identity and feature prominently in its gatherings and recruitment efforts, according to a review of federal court records. One former member, Andrew Munsinger, built and traded semi-automatic AR-15 rifles and other weapons, using a machine shop to fabricate untraceable parts, according to an FBI affidavit filed in federal court. He boasted to other AFN members of stockpiling ammunition and constructing explosive devices, and claimed to have pointed a shotgun at a sleeping prosecutor, the affidavit said. Munsinger, who went by the alias "Thor,' was arrested last year in Minneapolis on federal charges of illegally possessing firearms. As a convicted felon, he was barred under federal law from owning weapons. He attended at least five AFN events in one year, the FBI said. Agents described him as an adherent of accelerationism, which seeks to provoke a race war through violence. AFN is "an umbrella organization for other white-supremacist organizations,' the affidavit said. Documents relating to Munsinger's case, including testimony from an FBI informant who infiltrated the group, offer a glimpse inside its operations: firearms training across several states, encrypted communications focused on weapons, a recruitment event at a lakeside bar in Ohio, and new members building timber swastikas in a ritualistic initiation. Stout said he disavowed Munsinger, who was convicted by a federal jury in April of illegally possessing firearms and ammunition, as well as trafficking marijuana. He is awaiting sentencing. Munsinger and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment. Stout said his network has links to the Klan, which has splintered and shrunk dramatically since its peak a century ago. In May, a modern-day Klan ceremony was held in a clearing deep within the woods on private land in northeastern Kentucky. William Bader, leader of the Trinity Knights, a small Klan faction, donned a purple silk robe and conical hood as he presided over the swearing in of about half a dozen heavily tattooed new members. In an interview, Bader said Trump has energized the white nationalist movement. "White people,' he said, "are finally seeing something going their way for once.' Bader said he had previously attended an AFN event without elaborating. Steve Bowers, another Klan official at the ceremony, which didn't involve AFN, said he isn't a fan of Trump because of his administration's close ties with Israel. But he said many white nationalists are fully behind the president. "People think he's going to save the white race in America,' said Bowers, dressed in a white KKK robe and hood, decorated with two blood crosses on the chest. The Klan once claimed as many as 6 million members in the 1920s. It had dwindled to an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 members across 72 chapters by 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that tracks extremist groups. More recent figures are unavailable, a research analyst at the center said. AFN has adopted certain tactics and rituals of the Klan, including widespread distribution of racist flyers. AFN's flyers have appeared in multiple cities and towns, from Florida to Washington state, according to police reports. Stout and Barr said they view them as a recruitment tool. Police in West Bend, Wisconsin, said hundreds of flyers targeting immigrants were distributed in May. One flyer found in the Wisconsin village of Mukwonago read, "Tired of being discriminated against because you're white? Join.' Stout said members are instructed to distribute flyers at night — what he calls "night rides,' echoing the Klan's term for its historic terrorism campaigns against Black people. In another echo of the Klan, its signature cross burnings, swastikas are set alight at AFN gatherings. In an AFN video posted online, Stout stands on the bed of a pickup truck, masked and flanked by armed guards, arm raised in a Nazi salute. "White power!' he shouts in a hoarse Texas drawl, wearing a chest rig for rifle magazines. His audience returns the Nazi salute. "White Power!' they call out. At the restaurant in Oklahoma, asked why he believes his group is gaining momentum, Stout offered a simple explanation. "Our side won the election,' he said.
Japan Times
2 hours ago
- Japan Times
In a Trump-Putin summit, Ukraine fears losing say over its future
For nearly three years of the war in Ukraine, Washington's rallying cry in backing a fight against a Russian invasion was "no negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine.' But when President Donald Trump meets President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Alaska on Friday, the Ukrainians will not be there, barring any last-minute invitation. And Kyiv's swift rejection of Trump's declaration that he is already negotiating with Russia over what he vaguely called "land swaps,' with no mention of security guarantees or arms for Ukraine, underscores the risks for the Ukrainians It also carries political perils for Trump. Ukraine's fear for these past six months has been that Trump's image of a "peace accord' is a deal struck directly between him and Putin — much as Franklin Roosevelt, Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill divided up Europe at the Yalta conference in 1945. That meeting has become synonymous with historical debates over what can go wrong when great powers carve up the world, smaller powers suffer the consequences and free people find themselves cast under authoritarian rule. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, himself invited such comparisons in a speech to his people hours after Trump raised the specter of deciding Ukraine's fate in a one-on-one meeting in Alaska, territory that was once part of the Russian empire. (While Putin has made clear that he regards Ukraine as rightful Russian territory dating back to the days of Peter the Great, the Russian leader has not called for the reversal of the $7.2 million sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867, during a period of financial distress for the empire.) "Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,' Zelenskyy said, noting that the Ukrainian Constitution prohibits such a deal. Then, in what sounded like a direct warning to Trump, he added: "Any solutions that are against us, any solutions that are without Ukraine, are simultaneously solutions against peace. They will not bring anything. These are dead solutions.' Zelenskyy is the one with the most on the line in the summit. After his bitter Oval Office encounter with Trump in February, which ended in Trump's declaration that "you don't have the cards right now,' he has every reason to fear Trump is at best an unreliable partner. At worst, Trump is susceptible to being flattered and played by Putin, for whom he has often expressed admiration. Ukrainian civilians rush away from the scene of a drone attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on July 7. Since Trump retook office, many Ukrainians have worried a peace accord would be struck without them. | DAVID GUTTENFELDER / THE NEW YORK TIMES But there are also considerable political risks for Trump. Those would be especially acute if he is viewed as forcing millions of Ukrainians into territorial concessions, with few compensating guarantees that Putin would not, after taking a breather of a few years, seize the rest of the country. "President Trump still seems to be going into this conversation as if Putin is negotiating as a partner or friend,' said Tressa Guenov, director for programs and operations at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. "That will continue to make these discussions difficult if Ukraine isn't involved.' Trump's personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, raised the possibility of a meeting of Trump, Zelenskyy and Putin, and in the past week, it looked like that might be a precondition for the session in Alaska. But Trump waved away the notion when asked about it by reporters Friday. A senior administration official said Saturday that the president remained open to a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelenskyy, but that the meeting between Trump and Putin was set to go ahead as scheduled. Yet the gap in how Trump approaches these negotiations and how the United States' allies in Europe approach them became all the more vivid Saturday. After a meeting of European national security advisers and Ukrainian officials with Vice President JD Vance, who is on a visit to Britain, leaders of the European Union's executive branch and nations including France, Britain, Italy and Germany called in a statement for "active diplomacy, support to Ukraine and pressure on the Russian Federation to end their illegal war.' They added that any agreement needed to include "robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,' phrases Trump has avoided. "The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,' the leaders said. Trump has long sought a direct meeting with Putin, declaring publicly that a problem like Ukraine could only be resolved with a meeting between the two top leaders. He also said last week that he expects to see President Xi Jinping of China before the end of the year. And he seems reluctant to impose more tariffs or sanctions ahead of those meetings. In fact, his deadline for Putin to declare a ceasefire or face crushing "secondary sanctions' melted away Friday without a mention from Trump, other than that people should wait for his meeting with Putin. The fact that Trump is even meeting with Putin represents a small victory for the Russian president, Guenov said. "Trump still has given Putin the benefit of the doubt, and that dynamic is one Putin will attempt to exploit even beyond this meeting,' she added. While Trump has insisted that an understanding between himself and the Russian president is crucial to a broader peace, Putin, Guenov said, would certainly welcome any land concessions Trump is willing to grant. Already the president has signaled that is where these talks are headed. Trump on Friday suggested that a peace deal between the two countries could include "some swapping of territories,' signaling that the United States may join Russia in trying to compel Ukraine to permanently cede some of its land — the suggestion flatly rejected by Zelenskyy. Ukrainian firefighters and rescue workers lower the covered body of a person killed in a Russian strike on an apartment building in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on June 22. | DAVID GUTTENFELDER / THE NEW YORK TIMES "We're going to get some back, and we're going to get some switched,' said Trump, leaving unclear who the "we' in that statement was. "There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we'll be talking about that either later, or tomorrow.' Russian officials have demanded that Ukraine cede the four regions that Moscow claimed to have "annexed' from Ukraine in late 2022, even as some of that land remains under Ukrainian control. And Russia is seeking a formal declaration that the Crimean Peninsula is once again its territory. (Yalta, where the meeting of three great powers was held 80 years ago, is a resort city on the southern coast of Crimea.) Until late last week, it appeared likely that the meeting between Trump and Putin would be held on the traditional neutral grounds of the old Cold War, perhaps in Geneva or Vienna. (President Joe Biden saw Putin in Geneva in June 2021, eight months before the Ukraine invasion, for what turned out to be the only face-to-face meeting of their presidencies.) Putin's willingness to venture into American territory was striking, not least because his arrival in the United States will signal the end of his political and legal isolation from the country. In the past few months, Trump has terminated efforts at the Justice Department and the State Department to collect evidence of war crimes committed by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine. But inviting Putin to meet in the United States seemed to extinguish any threat that the United States would provide evidence to the prosecution. "It's bewildering how we could bring in somebody the International Criminal Court has classified as a war criminal,' said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, who has tracked many of the Russian violations. But he emphasized that Putin is entering the meeting with Trump in an extraordinarily weak position economically and that it would benefit U.S. negotiators to realize how few cards Russia holds. "The mystical illusion of power that Putin creates is as real as the Wizard of Oz,' Sonnenfeld said. "The Russian economy has been imploding. Trump doesn't seem to realize that.' Sonnenfeld cautioned Trump against any deal in which Ukraine would give up rights to the Donbas region, particularly given the agreement that the Trump administration negotiated for the U.S. to share in future revenues from Ukraine's mineral reserves through a joint investment fund. "Giving up the Donbas would be disastrous,' he said. "That is where a lot of these valuable minerals are.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times © 2025 The New York Times Company
NHK
3 hours ago
- NHK
Vance: Ceasefire agreement likely to leave both sides unhappy
US Vice President JD Vance says a ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine is unlikely to satisfy either side. Vance made the remarks in an interview with Fox News aired on Sunday ahead of the upcoming meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Vance said that the Trump administration is "going to try to find some negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians and the Russians can live with, where they can live in relative peace, where the killing stops." He added: "It's not going to make anybody super happy. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably, at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it." Vance also noted that Washington is working to schedule three-way talks between Trump, Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Asked whether he wants Putin to meet Zelenskyy before a meeting with Trump, Vance said that he did not think that would be very productive. He indicated that summit talks between Trump and Putin will take place before any other negotiations. Zelenskyy and European leaders are concerned that the US and Russian leaders may discuss territorial issues without any involvement by Ukraine.
