Six Things to Know About Nuclear War
The risk of nuclear war is different today than it was during the Cold War. And it's getting worse, says Bloomberg Opinion columnist Andreas Kluth. (Source: Bloomberg)
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trump and Putin will meet at Alaska base long used to counter Russia
In an ironic twist, President Donald Trump is set to discuss the war in Ukraine with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at a military base in Alaska that was crucial to countering the Soviet Union during the height of Cold War and still plays a role today. The meeting is scheduled to take place Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning. The base created by merging Elmendorf Air Force Base and Army Fort Richardson in 2010 has played a key strategic role in monitoring and deterring the Soviet Union during much of the Cold War. Throughout its long history, the base hosted large numbers of aircraft and oversaw operations of a variety of early warning radar sites that were aimed at detecting Soviet military activity and any possible nuclear launches. It earned the motto 'Top Cover for North America' at this time, according to the base website. While much of the military hardware has since been deactivated, the base still hosts key aircraft squadrons, including the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet. Planes from the base also still intercept Russian aircraft that regularly fly into U.S. airspace. The leaders' meeting at an American military base allows them to avoid any protests and provides an important level of security, said Benjamin Jensen, senior fellow for defense and security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. 'For President Trump, it's a great way for him to show American military strength while also isolating the ability of the public or others to intervene with what he probably hopes is a productive dialogue,' Jensen said. He said the location means Trump can cultivate ties with Putin while 'signaling military power to try to gain that bargaining advantage to make a second meeting possible.' The irony of Putin visiting an American military base that long has — and still does — aimed to counter Russian threats comes as Trump works to reach a ceasefire deal in a war that he promised during the 2024 campaign to end quickly. Officials from Ukraine and Europe fear that the one-on-one meeting they will not take part in could lead to an outcome that favors Russian goals. French President Emmanuel Macron said Trump was 'very clear' that the United States wants to achieve a ceasefire at the summit. Macron spoke after a virtual meeting between Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders. Trump has said any major agreement could involve land swaps and that Zelenskyy and Putin could meet next or he could meet with both leaders. 'There's a very good chance that we're going to have a second meeting, which will be more productive than the first, because the first is I'm going to find out where we are and what we're doing,' Trump told reporters Wednesday. 'It's going to be a very important meeting, but it's setting the table for the second meeting.' Associated Press writer Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
B-2, fighter jets fly over as Trump-Putin summit begins
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska — President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin kicked off their Alaska summit with a warm handshake on Friday, greeting each other like old friends before heading into hours of discussions that could reshape the war in Ukraine and relations between Moscow and Washington. After descending from Air Force One, Trump applauded as Putin approached along a red carpet. They gripped hands for an extended period of time, with both men smiling, and Putin eventually grinned and pointed skyward, where B-2s and F-22s — military aircraft designed to oppose Russia during the Cold War — flew overhead to mark the moment at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Reporters nearby yelled, 'President Putin, will you stop killing civilians?' and Russia's leader put his hand up to his ear but didn't answer. Trump and Putin then both climbed in the U.S. presidential limo, with Putin grinning widely as the vehicle rolled past the cameras. The pair's chumminess, while not altogether surprising considering their longtime friendly relationship, was striking given the bloodshed and suffering in the war Putin started in Ukraine — the biggest land war in Europe since World War II. It was likely to raise concerns from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders, who fear that Trump will primarily focus on furthering U.S. interests and fail to press hard for Ukraine's. Zelenskyy and European leaders were excluded from Friday's meeting, and Ukraine's president was left posting a video address in which he expressed his hope for a 'strong position from the U.S.' 'Everyone wants an honest end to the war. Ukraine is ready to work as productively as possible to end the war,' he said, later adding, 'The war continues and it continues precisely because there is no order, nor any signals from Moscow, that it is preparing to end this war.' The summit was a chance for Trump to prove he's a master dealmaker and peacemaker. He and his allies have cast him as a heavyweight negotiator who can find a way to bring the slaughter to a close — something he used to boast he could do quickly. For Putin, it was an opportunity to try to negotiate a deal that would cement Russia's gains, block Kyiv's bid to join the NATO military alliance and eventually pull Ukraine back into Moscow's orbit. Not meeting one-on-one anymore White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the previously planned one-on-one meeting between Trump and Putin was now a three-on-three discussion including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff. Putin was joined by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov. The change indicates that the White House is taking a more guarded approach than it did during a 2018 meeting in Helsinki, when Trump and Putin met privately just with their interpreters for two hours and where Trump shocked the world by siding with the Russian leader over U.S. intelligence officials on whether Russia meddled in the 2016 campaign. Trump and Putin began their discussions Friday by sitting with their aides in front of a blue backdrop printed with 'Alaska' and 'Pursuing Peace.' Putin and Trump are expected to hold a joint press conference at the end of the summit. Trump-Putin summit could decide the course of the Russia-Ukraine war There are significant risks for Trump. By bringing Putin onto U.S. soil — America bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for roughly 2 cents per acre — the president is giving him the validation he desires after his ostracization following his invasion of Ukraine 3 1/2 years ago. Zelenskyy's exclusion is a heavy blow to the West's policy of 'nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine' and invites the possibility that Trump could agree to a deal that Ukraine does not want. Any success is far from assured since Russia and Ukraine remain far apart in their demands for peace. Putin has long resisted any temporary ceasefire, linking it to a halt in Western arms supplies and a freeze on Ukraine's mobilization efforts, which are conditions rejected by Kyiv and its Western allies. Trump said earlier in the week there was a 25% chance that the summit would fail, but he also floated the idea that if the meeting succeeds he could bring Zelenskyy to Alaska for a subsequent meeting with himself and Putin. Trump has also expressed doubts about getting an immediate ceasefire, but he has wanted a broad peace deal done quickly. That seemingly echoes Putin's longtime argument that Russia favors a comprehensive deal to end the fighting, reflecting its demands, and not a temporary halt to hostilities. Trump has offered shifting explanations for his meeting goals Trump previously characterized the sit-down as ''really a feel-out meeting.' But he's also warned of 'very severe consequences' for Russia if Putin doesn't agree to end the war. Trump said before arriving in Alaska that his talks with Putin will include Russian demands that Ukraine cede territory as part of a peace deal. He said Ukraine has to decide, but he also suggested Zelenskyy should accept concessions. 'I've got to let Ukraine make that decision. And I think they'll make a proper decision,' Trump told reporters traveling with him to Alaska. Trump said there's 'a possibility' of the United States offering Ukraine security guarantees alongside European powers, 'but not in the form of NATO.' Putin has fiercely resisted Ukraine joining the trans-Atlantic security alliance, a long-term goal for Ukrainians seeking to forge stronger ties with the West. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO's supreme allied commander Europe, is in Alaska to provide 'military advice' to Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to a senior NATO military official who wasn't authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. His presence is likely to be welcomed by European leaders who have tried to convince Trump to be firm with Putin and not deal over Kyiv's head. Potentially far-reaching implications Foreign governments are watching closely to see how Trump reacts to Putin, likely gauging what the interaction might mean for their own dealings with the U.S. president, who has eschewed traditional diplomacy for his own transactional approach to relationships. The meeting comes as the war has caused heavy losses on both sides and drained resources. Ukraine has held on far longer than some initially expected since the February 2022 invasion, but it is straining to hold off Russia's much larger army, grappling with bombardments of its cities and fighting for every inch on the over 600-mile front line. Alaska is separated from Russia at its closest point by just 3 miles and the international date line. Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson was crucial to countering the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It continues to play a role today, as planes from the base still intercept Russian aircraft that regularly fly into U.S. airspace. Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Jonathan J. Cooper in Washington, Elise Morton in London and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.
Washington Post
7 hours ago
- Washington Post
The Trump-Putin summit wasn't a disaster, but it was a U.S. defeat
U.S. leaders and their Soviet or Russian counterparts have met many times in the more than eight decades since Franklin D. Roosevelt journeyed to Tehran in 1943 for a summit with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. The Friday meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Alaska was far from the worst. But it wasn't good, either, except from the Kremlin's vantage point. It was not Yalta (1945), where Roosevelt and Churchill handed over Eastern Europe to Soviet domination (albeit with little choice in the matter). It was not Vienna (1961), where Nikita Khrushchev was so unimpressed by the young U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, that he was emboldened to build a wall across Berlin and to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. It was not even Helsinki (2018), where Trump humiliated himself and his country by accepting Putin's assurances that Russia had not meddled in the 2016 election over the findings of the U.S. intelligence that it had. The best thing you can say about the Alaska summit is that it could have been worse. There is no indication that Trump endorsed Putin's demand that Ukraine hand over more territory to Russia in return for a ceasefire. Nor was there any deal to relax U.S. sanctions on Russia. If Trump had made concessions on that scale, the Alaska summit would have been remembered as another Yalta. But, if Alaska was not a disaster, it was definitely a defeat. Putin walked away the clear winner from his latest encounter with an American president. Putin's triumph was evident from the very start of the gathering at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson where U.S. troops literally rolled out the red carpet for a dictator, indicted as a war criminal by the International Criminal Court in 2023, who cannot risk journeying to most countries for fear of being arrested. Trump looked positively giddy as he welcomed Putin with a big smile and a handshake and then treated him to a ride in the presidential limousine — a beast inside 'The Beast.' Several hours later, the two men emerged from their meeting with aides for a joint news conference. No deal was announced, but the two leaders heaped praise on each other. Putin flattered his counterpart by insisting that he would never have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president. (Why, then, has Putin has more than doubled drone and missile strikes since Trump was inaugurated?) (yeah, right). Trump looked subdued but nevertheless gushed over Putin: "Thank you very much, Mr. President, that was very profound, and I will say that I believe we had a very productive meeting.' Trump went on to say, mysteriously, 'There were many, many points that we agreed on … a couple of big ones that we haven't quite gotten there.' In the hours after the summit, it became clear that that one of the 'big' points on which there was no agreement was a ceasefire for Ukraine. In the days leading up to the hastily convened summit, Trump had threatened Putin with 'very severe consequences' if he did not stop his attacks on Ukraine, and on the flight to Alaska Trump told Fox News, 'I won't be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire.' Well, there was no ceasefire — but also no consequences. In a post-summit interview with Fox, Trump said he would hold off imposing new sanctions because 'the meeting went very well.' And then, in the middle of the night, Trump revealed on social media that he had dropped his demand for a ceasefire and had agreed with Putin to go straight to negotiating 'a Peace Agreement, which would end the war.' Trump thereby took the pressure off Putin to stop his vicious attacks against Ukraine. As Putin made clear in the news conference, he has not budged from his demand that any peace agreement must address 'the primary causes of that conflict.' Of course, from Putin's perspective, the primary cause of the conflict is Ukraine's insistence on becoming a pro-Western democracy that does not take orders from the Kremlin. Thus, Putin has managed to play yet another U.S. president for a sucker. This has been a pattern ever since his first meeting with George W. Bush in Slovenia in 2001, when, at the post-summit news conference, Bush memorably said that he had looked Putin in the eye, got 'a sense of his soul,' and 'found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.' John McCain later quipped: 'I looked in Mr. Putin's eyes and I saw three letters — a K, a G, and a B.' Indeed, Putin has become expert at using his KGB training and his native guile to manipulate his gullible American counterparts. In his post-summit interview on Friday, Trump revealed that the Russian dictator had even told him that he won the 2020 election and that the election 'was rigged because you have mail-in voting.' The only thing more ridiculous than imagining that Putin (whose primary rival died in prison) is an expert on election integrity is to imagine that Putin has any 'brotherly' affection for the people of Ukraine, as he claimed in the post-summit news conference. Given Trump's incoherent approach to the war in Ukraine, it is too soon to despair. Trump hinted to European leaders after the summit that he would be willing to extend a U.S. security guarantee to Ukraine as part of a peace settlement. If true, that would be a significant win for Kyiv. Trump is often influenced by the last person he talked to, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is coming to Washington on Monday. Let's hope that the next Trump-Zelensky meeting at the White House will be less tumultuous than the last one, which ended in a shouting match. But it's unlikely to be as friendly as the Trump-Putin meet-ups.
