Anchorage abuzz ahead of Trump-Putin summit – but ‘please don't sell us back'

The Guardian

6 days ago

It is set to be one of the last good summer weekends in Anchorage, Alaska – the peak of the salmon run and the middle of berry season – and residents hope that Friday's summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin isn't going to ruin it for them.
'I'm looking forward to taking my boat out on the water at Prince William Sound – that's my plan,' said Andy Moderow, who works at a conservation non-profit in Anchorage.
Jeff Landfield, owner of the Alaska Landmine news site, said: 'We've had a pretty good summer. Getting projects done, going out hunting, fishing, camping, four-wheeling. But it's coming to the close of the season, so I've seen several people say, 'They better not fuck up my plans.''
The largest city in Alaska, Anchorage sits farther north than Oslo and St Petersburg. With a population of just under 300,000 people, its low-slung downtown sits on mud flats above the Cook Inlet, at the base of the Chugach mountains. Its neighborhoods sprawl on wide streets between strip malls and stands of birch; its downtown shops sell Alaska Native handicrafts and bear and moose-themed souvenirs.
Residents refer to the rest of the US as 'the lower 48', and see themselves as having 'an independent streak', said Colleen Heaney-Mead, who runs a daycare in Anchorage.
'We don't want to be part of whatever is happening there,' she said, discussing the Trump administration's actions in the contiguous US. 'We don't have to do everything they do.'
Friday's summit won't mark the first time the city has been the setting for high-profile diplomacy. China's president, Xi Jinping, stopped off at the city in 2017, dining on king salmon and crab bisque on his way back from a meeting with Trump in Florida.
Two years later, Anchorage was the venue for a tense meeting between Chinese diplomats and officials from the Biden government who publicly rebuked each other over human rights abuses and systemic racism.
But this time around, things feels different.
In Alaska, Russia is not an abstract enemy but a close neighbor; its jets buzz Alaskan airspace, its government is said to be undercutting Alaskan fishermen. Anchorage residents are torn between excitement over a high-profile visit and trepidation over what that visit might mean.
'You feel like Anchorage is back on the map in a way, which I think everyone sort of enjoys,' said Hollis French, a retired state senator who served on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
'Although I had dinner last night with two friends, and we're all sort of pessimistic and skeptical. You know, I would say we're expecting Trump to do something horrible.'
Trump's announcement that he was going to meet Putin 'in Russia' also set off alarm bells in a region which was part of the Russian empire until its sale to the US in 1867.
'There's the satirical response that Alaskans have: 'Please don't sell us back,'' said Heaney-Mead.
Moderow, who grew up at the end of the cold war, said fallout shelters and nuclear drills were some of his earliest memories, even if Alaskan politicians, such as the 2008 vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, at times make a bit much of the short distance between the two countries.
'Russia is a neighbor,' he said. 'If you've grown up in the state, you are aware of Russia, and its proximity – even though Sarah Palin kind of oversold it in her debate.'
French concurred, saying: 'We are aware that they're a hostile neighbor. We are aware that they probe our defenses and we respond accordingly. I think most people know that the leader of the country is not, you know, the embodiment of the country. But [Putin] certainly got his people cowed. And so I think Alaskans are wary of him.'
Landfield gestured to longstanding cultural ties between Russia and Alaska, including university exchange programs, and the Old Believers, a sect of the Russian Orthodox church, brought to Alaska by Russians fleeing repression over the years. 'People don't like Putin. It's not Russia or Russians,' he said. 'I don't think Russia is our enemy.'
Matt Acuña Buxton, a longtime political reporter based in Anchorage, said there was 'a really broad dissatisfaction' that Putin – the subject of an international criminal court (ICC) arrest warrant – is visiting the city.
'A lot of Alaskans really understand that Putin and Putin's administration are really not friends of Alaskans,' he said.
The White House has signalled that the summit will be held at the military base in north-east Anchorage, a letdown for locals, said Meade, as 'anything that happens on base isn't like it really happens in Alaska'.
That hasn't stopped Anchorage residents from offering other ideas: 49% of respondents to a poll from the Alaska Landmine suggested the two world leaders could meet 'at Sarah Palin's house'.
Another Anchorage newsletter, the Alaska Memo, proposed that Trump and Putin could hike Flattop mountain, the 'quintessential Anchorage-area date night', or stay at Skinny Dick's Halfway Inn on the road to Fairbanks.
'It's a meme-rich environment right now,' said Landfield.
Acuña Buxton, who writes the Alaska Memo, said such satire offers Alaskans a way of coping with the 'dystopian' and improbable scenario of Trump trading Alaska to Russia.
'Ultimately, in the big picture of things, this is about Ukraine,' he said of the Trump-Putin meeting. '[But] I think for Alaskans, it's just sort of like a chance to roll our eyes a little bit and make some jokes.'