Putin lays flowers for Soviet pilots buried in Alaska after Trump summit; here's why they are buried there
According to Reuters, the pilots died in training accidents or harsh weather conditions while ferrying US-built aircraft to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Programme.
During the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union were allies against Nazi Germany. Under the Lend-Lease Programme, Washington supplied Moscow with nearly 8,000 aircraft.
Between 1942 and 1945, Soviet pilots trained alongside American crews in Fairbanks, Alaska, before flying the planes across the Bering Strait to Siberia.
The route, known as the Alaska-Siberia air road, was vital for delivering planes to the Eastern Front. Some pilots, however, died in crashes or due to extreme weather. Initially buried in Fairbanks and Nome, their remains were reinterred at Fort Richardson in 1946 by order of the US administration of the Alaska National Cemetery.
For decades, the existence of the cemetery went largely unrecorded in Russian archives.
In 1990, a delegation from the Soviet Committee of War Veterans confirmed the site's history. In 2011, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev awarded Virginia Walker, the cemetery's director, for her role in maintaining the graves, which remain preserved with inscriptions in both English and Russian.
Putin's visit came shortly after his one-on-one and expanded meetings with Trump at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, which lasted nearly three hours.
While the summit did not produce a ceasefire deal in the Ukraine war, Trump said the next steps involve further discussions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other NATO leaders.
(With inputs from Reuters, LiveNOW from Fox)
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